VllVllXVJO KJl 

THE PACIFK 




A.C.LAUT 



VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 



-y^y^o- 



Vikings of the Pacific 

THE ADVENTURES 

OF THE 

EXPLORERS WHO CAME FROM THE 
WEST EASTWARD 



BERING, THE DANE; THE OUTLAW HUNTERS OF RUSSIA; 
BENYOWSKY, THE POLISH PIRATE; COOK AND VAN- 
COUVER, THE ENGLISH NAVIGATORS; GRAY OF 
BOSTON, THE DISCOVERER OF THE COLUM- 
BIA; DRAKE, LED YARD, AND OTHER 
SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE ON THE 
WEST COAST OF AMERICA 



BY 

A. C. LAUT 

AUTHOR OF "PATHFINDERS OF THE WEST," ETC. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 
1905 

All rights reserved 



f ?s/ 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 

DEC 6 1905 

OoD>riffht Entry 

CLASS c\ XXc. No. 

COPY B, 



Copyright, 1905, 
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotyped. Published December, 1905. 



NortooDlj ^frtaa 

J. S. Gushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



Foreword 

At the very time the early explorers of New France 
were pressing from the east, westward, a tide of ad- 
venture had set across Siberia and the Pacific from 
the west, eastward. Carrier and Champlain of New 
France in the east have their counterparts and con- 
temporaries on the Pacific coast of America in Francis 
Drake, the English pirate on the coast of California, 
and in Staduchin and DeshneflF and other Cossack 
plunderers of the North Pacific, whose rickety keels 
first ploughed a furrow over the trackless sea out from 
Asia. Marquette, Jolliet and La Salle — backed by 
the prestige of the French government are not unlike 
the English navigators. Cook and Vancouver, sent out 
by the English Admiralty. Radisson, privateer and 
adventurer, might find counterpart on the Pacific 
coast in either Gray, the discoverer of the Columbia, 
or Ledyard, whose ill-fated, wildcat plans resulted 
in the Lewis and Clark expedition. Bering was con- 
temporaneous with La Verendrye; and so the com- 
parison might be carried on between Benyowsky, the 
Polish pirate of the Pacific, or the Outlaw Hunters of 
Russia, and the famous buccaneers of the eastern 
Spanish Main. The main point is — that both tides 



viii FOREWORD 

of adventure, from the east, westward, from the west, 
eastward, met, and clashed, and finally coalesced in 
the great fur trade, that won the West. 

The Spaniards of the Southwest — even when they 
extended their explorations into the Northwest — 
have not been included in this volume, for the simple 
reason they would require a volume by themselves. 
Also, their aims as explorers were always secondary 
to their aims as treasure hunters; and their main ex- 
ploits were confined to the Southwest. Other Pacific 
coast explorers, like La Perouse, are not included here 
because they were not, in the truest sense, discoverers, 
and their exploits really belong to the story of the fights 
among the different fur companies, who came on the 
ground after the first adventurers. 

In every case, reference has been to first sources, to 
the records left by the doers of the acts themselves, or 
their contemporaries — some of the data in manu- 
script, some in print; but it may as well be frankly 
acknowledged that all first sources have not been ex- 
hausted. To do so in the case of a single explorer, 
say either Drake or Bering — would require a life- 
time. For instance, there are in St. Petersburg some 
thirty thousand folios on the Bering expedition to 
America. Probably only one person — a Danish 
professor — has ever examined all of these; and the 
results of his investigations I have consulted. Also, 
there are in the State Department, Washington, some 
hundred old log-books of the Russian hunters which 



FOREWORD ix 

have — as far as I know — never been turned by a 
single hand, though I understand their outsides were 
looked at during the fur seal controversy. The data 
on this era of adventure I have chiefly obtained from 
the works of Russian archivists, published in French 
and English. To give a list of all authorities quoted 
would be impossible. On Alaska alone, the least- 
known section of the Pacific coast, there is a biblio- 
graphical list of four thousand. The better-known 
coast southward has equally voluminous records. Nor 
is such a list necessary. Nine-tenths of it are made 
up of either descriptive works or purely scientific pam- 
phlets; and of the remaining tenth, the contents are 
obtained in undiluted condition by going directly to 
the first sources. A few of these first sources are in- 
dicated in each section. 

It is somewhat remarkable that Gray — as true a 
naval hero as ever trod the quarter-deck, who did the 
same for the West as Cartier for the St. Lawrence, 
and Hudson for the river named after him — is the 
one man of the Pacific coast discoverers of whom 
there are scantiest records. Authentic histories are still 
written, that cast doubt on his achievement. Certainly 
a century ago Gray was lionized in Boston ; but it may 
be his feat was overshadowed by the world-history of 
the new American republic and the Napoleonic wars 
at the opening of the nineteenth century; or the world 
may have taken him at his own valuation ; and Gray 
was a hero of the non-shouting sort. The data on 



X FOREWORD 

Gray's discovery have been obtained from the de- 
scendants of the Boston men who outfitted him, and 
from his own great-grandchildren. Though he died 
a poor man, the red blood of his courage and ability 
seems to have come down to his descendants; for their 
names are among the best known in contemporary 
American life. To them my thanks are tendered. 
Since the contents of this volume appeared serially in 
Leslie's Monthly, Outing, and Harper s Magazine, 
fresh data have been sent to me on minor points 
from descendants of the explorers and from collectors. 
I take this opportunity to thank these contributors. 
Among many others, special thanks are due Dr. George 
Davidson, President of San Francisco Geographical 
Society, for facts relating to the topography of the 
coast, and to Dr. Leo Stejneger of the Smithsonian, 
Washington, for facts gathered on the very spot where 
Bering perished. 

Wassaic, New York, 
July 15, 1905. 



CONTENTS 



PART I 

Dealing with the Russians on the Pacific Coast of 
America — Bering, the Dane, the Sea-otter Hunt- 
ers, the Outlaws, and Benyowsky, the Polish Pirate 

CHAPTER I 

1 700-1 743 
Vitus Bering, the Dane 

PAGE 

Peter the Great sends Bering on Two Voyages : First, to dis- 
cover whether America and Asia are united ; Second, to 
find what lies north of New Spain — Terrible Hardships 
of Caravans crossing Siberia for Seven Thousand Miles — 
Ships lost in the Mist — Bering's Crew cast away on a 
Barren Isle ........ 3 

CHAPTER II 

1741-1743 
Continuation of Bering, the Dane 

Frightful Sufferings of the Castaways on the Commander Islands 
— The Vessel smashed in a Winter Gale, the Sick are 
dragged for Refuge into Pits of Sand — Here, Bering 
perishes, and the Crew Winter — The Consort Ship under 
Chirikofi-" Ambushed — How the Castaways reach Home . 37 



xii CONTENTS 

CHAPTER III 

1741-1760 
The Sea-otter Hunters 

PAGE 

How the Sea-otter Pelts brought back by Bering's Crew led 
to the Exploitation of the Northwest Coast of America — 
Difference of Sea-otter from Other Fur-bearing Animals of 
the West — Perils of the Hunt <, . . . .62 

CHAPTER IV 

1 760-1 770 

The Outlaw Hunters 

The American Coast becomes the Great Rendezvous for Siberian 
Criminals and Political Exiles — Beyond Reach of Law, 
Cossacks and Criminals perpetrate Outrages on the Indians 
— The Indians' Revenge wipes out Russian Forts in Amer- 
ica — The Pursuit of Four Refugee Russians from Cave to 
Cave over the Sea at Night — How they escape after a 
Year's Chase ........ 80 

CHAPTER V 

1768-1772 

Count Mauritius Benyowsky, the Polish Pirate 

Siberian Exiles under Polish Soldier of Fortune plot to over- 
throw Garrison of Kamchatka and escape to West Coast 
of America as Fur Traders — A Bloody Melodrama enacted 
at Bolchercsk — The Count and his Criminal Crew sail to 
America . . . . . . . .106 



€ 



«' 



CONTENTS xni 



PART II 

American and English Adventurers on the West Coast 
OF America — Francis Drake in California — Cook, 
FROM British Columbia to Alaska — Ledyard, the 
Forerunner of Lewis and Clark — Gray, the Dis- 
coverer OF the Columbia — Vancouver, the Last of 
THE West Coast Navigators 



CHAPTER VI 

1562-1595 

Francis Drake in California 

PAGE 

How the Sea Rover was attacked and ruined as a Boy on the 
Spanish Main off Mexico — His Revenge in sacking Span- 
ish Treasure Houses and crossing Panama — The Richest 
Man in England, he sails to the Forbidden Sea, scuttles all 
the Spanish Ports up the West Coast of South America 
and takes Possession of New Albion (California) for 
England 133 

CHAPTER VII 

1728-1779 

Captain Cook in America 

The English Navigator sent Two Hundred Years later to find 
the New Albion of Drake's Discoveries — He misses both 
the Straits of Fuca and the Mouth of the Columbia, but 
anchors at Nootka, the Rendezvous of Future Traders — 



xlv CONTENTS 

PAGE 

No Northeast Passage found through Alaska — The True 
Cause of Cook's Murder in Hawaii told by Ledyard — 
Russia becomes Jealous of his Explorations . . .172 



CHAPTER VIII 

1785-1792 

Robert Gray, the American Discoverer of the Columbia 

Boston Merchants, inspired by Cook's Voyages, outfit Two 
Vessels under Kendrick and Gray for Discovery and Trade 
on the Pacific — Adventures of the First Ship to carry the 
American Flag around the World — Gray attacked by 
Indians at Tillamook Bay — His Discovery of the Colum- 
bia River on the Second Voyage — Fort Defence and the 
First American Ship built on the Pacific . . .210 



CHAPTER IX 

1778-1790 

John Ledyard, the Forerunner of Lewis and Clark 

A New England Ne'er-do-well, turned from the Door of Rich 
Relatives, joins Cook's Expedition to America — Adven- 
ture among the Russians of Oonalaska — Useless Endeavor 
to interest New England Merchants in Fur Trade — A 
Soldier of Fortune in Paris, he meets Jefferson and Paul 
Jones and outlines Exploration of Western America — Suc- 
ceeds in crossing Siberia alone on the Wav to America, but 
is thwarted by Russian Fur Traders . , . .242 



CONTENTS XV 

CHAPTER X 

1779-1794 
George Vancouver, Last of Pacific Coast Explorers 

PAGE 

Activities of Americans, Spanish, and Russians on the West Coast 
of America arouse England — Vancouver is sent out osten- 
sibly to settle the Quarrel between Fur Traders and Span- 
ish Governors at Nootka — Incidentally, he is to complete 
the Exploration of America's West Coast and take Possession 
for England of Unclaimed Territory — The Myth of a 
Northeast Passage dispelled Forever . . . .263 

PART III 

Exploration gives Place to Fur Trade — The Exploita- 
tion OF THE Pacific Coast under the Russian Ameri- 
can Fur Company, and the Renowned Leader Baranof 

CHAPTER XI 

1 579-1 867 

The Russian American Fur Company 

The Pursuit of the Sable leads Cossacks across Siberia ; of the 
Sea-otter, across the Pacific as far south as California — 
Caravans of Four Thousand Horses on the Long Trail 
Seven Thousand Miles across Europe and Asia — Banditti 
of the Sea — The Union of All Traders in One Monopoly 
— Siege and Slaughter of Sitka — How Monroe Doctrine 
grew out of Russian Fur Trade — Aims of Russia to domi- 
nate North Pacific . . . . . . .293 



xvi CONTENTS 

CHAPTER XII 

1747-1818 

Baranof, the Little Czar of the Pacific 

PAGE 

Baranof lays the Foundations of Russian Empire on the Pacific 
Coast of America — Shipwrecked on his Way to Alaska, 
he yet holds his Men in Hand and turns the Ill-hap to 
Advantage — How he bluffs the Rival Fur Companies in 
Line — First Russian Ship built in America — Adventures 
leading the Sea-otter Hunters — Ambushed by the Indians 
— The Founding of Sitka — Baranof, cast off in his Old 
Age, dies of Broken Heart . . . . .316 

Index ..•«....•. 339 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



Seal Rookery, Commander Islands 



Frontispiece 



Peter the Great 

Map of Course followed by Bering 

The St. Peter and St. Paul, from a 

comrade, Steller, the scientist 
Steller's Arch on Bering Island, named 

of Bering's Expedition 
A Glacier .... 

Sea Cows .... 

Seals in a Rookery on Bering Island 

Mauritius Augustus, Count Benyowsky 

Sir John Hawkins . 

Queen Elizabeth knighting Drake 

The Golden Hind . 

Francis Drake 

The Crowning of Drake in California 

The Silver Map of the World . 

Captain James Cook . , 

The Ice Islands 

The Death of Cook 

Departure of the Columbia and the Lady Washington 

Charles Bulfinch ........ 

Medals commemorating Columbia and Lady Washington Cruise 
Building the First American Ship on the Pacific Coast Facing 
Feather Cloak worn by a son of a Hawaiian Chief, at the 

celebration in honor of Gray's return . . . . 



rough sketch by Bering's 
after the scientist Steller, 

Facing 

. . Facing 

• • • . 

. Facing 



Facing 



PAGE 

5 

20-2I 
29 

39 
46 

53 

57 
109 

135 
146 

151 
155 

164 
171 
180 
194 
205 
21 1 
212 
215 
223 

226 



XVUl 



ILLUSTRATIONS 













PAGE 


John Derby ....... Facing 


228 


Map of Gray's two voyages, resulting in the discovery of the 




Columbia ...... Facing 


231 


A View of the Columbia River 






, 


237 


At the Mouth of the Columbia River 






. 


239 


Ledyard in his Dugout 






. 


244 


Captain George Vancouver 








Facing 


265 


The Columbia in a Squall 








. 


269 


The Discovery on the Rocks 








. 


274 


Indian Settlement at Nootka 










276 


Reindeer Herd in Siberia . 








Facing 


288 


Raised Reindeer Sledges . 








. 


294 


John Jacob Astor . 








Facing 


303 


Sitka from the Sea . 








(( 


3H 


Alexander Baranof . , , 








c 


317 



PART I 

DEALING WITH THE RUSSIANS ON THE PACIFIC 
COAST OF AMERICA — BERING, THE DANE, THE 
SEA-OTTER HUNTERS, THE OUTLAWS, AND BE- 
NYOWSKY, THE POLISH PIRATE 



Vikings of the Pacific 



CHAPTER I 

1 700- 1 743 

VITUS BERING, THE DANE 

Peter the Great sends Bering on Two Voyages : First, to discover 
whether America and Asia are united ; Second, to find what lies 
north of New Spain — Terrible Hardships of Caravans crossing 
Siberia for Seven Thousand Miles — Ships lost in the Mist — 
Bering's Crew cast away on a Barren Isle 

We have become such slaves of shallow science in 
these days, such firm believers in the fatalism which 
declares man the creature of circumstance, that we have 
almost forgotten the supremest spectacle in life is when 
man becomes the Creator of Circumstance. We forget 
that man can rise to be master of his destiny, fighting, 
unmaking, re-creating, not only his own environment, 
but the environment of multitudinous lesser men. 
There is something titanic in such lives. They are 
the hero myths of every nation's legends. We some- 

3 



4 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

how feel that the man who flings off the handicaps of 
birth and station Hfts the whole human race to a higher 
plane and has a bit of the God in him, though the hero 
may have feet of clay and body of beast. Such were 
the old Vikings of the North, who spent their lives in 
elemental warfare, and rode out to meet death in 
tempest, lashed to the spar of their craft. And such, 
too, were the New World Vikings of the Pacific, who 
coasted the seas of two continents in cockle-shell ships, 

— planks lashed with deer thongs, calked with moss, 

— rapacious in their deep-sea plunderings as beasts of 
prey, fearless as the very spirit of the storm itself. 
The adventures of the North Pacific Vikings read more 
like some old legend of the sea than sober truth; and 
the wild strain had its fountain-head in the most tem- 
pestuous hero and beastlike man that ever ascended 
the throne of the Russias. 

When Peter the Great of Russia worked as a ship's 
carpenter at the docks of the East India Company in 
Amsterdam, the sailors' tales of vast, undiscovered 
lands beyond the seas of Japan must have acted on his 
imagination like a match to gunpowder.^ Already he 
was dreaming those imperial conquests which Russia 
still dreams: of pushing his realm to the southernmost 
edge of Europe, to the easternmost verge of Asia, to 
the doorway of the Arctic, to the very threshold of the 

1 See Life of Peter the Great, by Orlando Williams, 1859; Peter the Great, by 
John Lothrop Motley, 1877; History of Peter I, by John Mottley, 1740; Journal 
0/ Peter the Great, 1698 ; Voltaire's Pierre le Grand; Segur's Histoire Je Russi* et 
de Pierre It Grand. 



VITUS BERING, THE DANE 



5 



Chinese capital. Already his Cossacks had scoured 
the two Siberias like birds of prey, exacting tribute 
from the wandering tribes of Tartary, of Kamchatka, 
of the Pacific, of the Siberian races in the north- 







^1 




'-^^H 




Bi^^/i^H 


^^K-' ' 






1 


^^^K^ 


di^"' 


^ 


fl 


wT^ 




f 


1 



Peter the Great. 

easternmost corner of Asia. And these Chukchee 
Indians of the Asiatic Pacific told the Russians of a 
land beyond the sea, of driftwood floating across the 
ocean unlike any trees growing in Asia, of dead whales 
washed ashore with the harpoons of strange hunters, 



6 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

and — most comical of all in the light of our modern 
knowledge about the Eskimo's tail-shaped fur coats — 
of men wrecked on the shores of Asia who might have 
qualified for Darwin's missing link, inasmuch as they 
wore tails. 

And now the sailors added yet more fabulous things 
to Peter's knowledge. There was an unknown conti- 
nent east of Asia, west of America, called on the maps 
*'Gamaland." ^ Now, Peter's consuming ambition 
was for new worlds to conquer. What of this "Gama- 
land".^ But, as the world knows, Peter was called 
home to suppress an insurrection. War, domestic 
broils, massacres that left a bloody stain on his glory, 
busied his hands for the remaining years of his life; 
and January of 1725 found the palaces of all the Russias 
hushed, for the Hercules who had scrunched all oppo- 
sition like a giant lay dying, ashamed to consult a 
physician, vanquished of his own vices, calling on 
Heaven for pity with screams of pain that drove physi- 
cians and attendants from the room. 

Perhaps remorse for those seven thousand wretches 
executed at one fell swoop after the revolt; perhaps 
memories of those twenty kneeling supplicants whose 
heads he had struck off with his own hand, drinking a 
bumper of quass to each stroke; perhaps reproaches 

^ Who this man Gama, supposed to have seen the unknown continent of Gamaland, 
was, no one knew. The Portuguese followed the myth blindly ; and the other geog- 
raphers followed the Portuguese. Texeira, court geographer in Portugal, in 1649 issued 
a map with a vague coast marked at latitude 45° north, with the words "Land seen by 
John de Gama, Indian, going from China to New Spain." 



VITUS BERING, THE DANE 7 

of the highway robbers whom he used to torture to slow 
death, two hundred at a time, by suspending them from 
hooks in their sides; perhaps the first wife, whom he 
repudiated, the first son whom he had done to death 
either by poison or convulsions of fright, came to haunt 
the darkness of his deathbed. 

Catherine, the peasant girl, elevated to be empress 
of all the Russias, could avail nothing. Physicians 
and scientists and navigators, Dane and English and 
Dutch, whom he had brought to Russia from all parts 
of Europe, were powerless. Vows to Heaven, in all 
the long hours he lay convulsed battling with Death, 
were useless. The sins of a lifetime could not be un- 
done by the repentance of an hour. Then, as if the 
dauntless Spirit of the man must rise finally triumphant 
over Flesh, the dying Hercules roused himself to one 
last supreme effort. 

Radisson, Marquette, La Salle, Verendrye, were 
reaching across America to win the undiscovered 
regions of the Western Sea for France. New Spain 
was pushing her ships northward from Mexico; and 
now, the dying Peter of Russia with his own hand 
wrote instructions for an expedition to search the 
boundaries between Asia and America. In a word, 
he set in motion that forward march of the Rus- 
sians across the Orient, which was to go on unchecked 
for two hundred years till arrested by the Japanese. 
The Czar's instructions were always laconic. They 
were written five weeks before his death, "(i) At 



8 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

Kamchatka . . . two boats are to be built. (2) With 
these you are to sail northward along the coast. 
... (3) You are to enquire where the American 
coast begins. . . . Write it down . . . obtain reliable in- 
formation . . . then, having charted the coast, return." ^ 
From the time that Peter the Great began to break 
down the Oriental isolation of Russia from the rest of 
Europe, it was his policy to draw to St. Petersburg — 
the city of his own creation — leaders of thought from 
every capital in Europe. And as his aim was to estab- 
lish a navy, he especially endeavored to attract foreign 
navigators to his kingdom. Among these were many 
Norse and Danes. The acquaintance may have dated 
from the apprenticeship on the docks of the East 
India Company; but at any rate, among the foreign 
navigators was one Vitus Ivanovich Bering, a Dane of 
humble origin from Horsens," who had been an East 
India Company sailor till he joined the Russian fleet 
as sub-lieutenant at the age of twenty-two, and fought 
his way up in the Baltic service through Peter's wars 
till in 1720 he was appointed captain of second rank. 
To Vitus Bering, the Dane, Peter gave the commission 
for the exploration of the waters between Asia and 
America. As a sailor, Bering had, of course, been on 
the borders of the Pacific.^ 

' These instructions were handed to Peter's admiral — Count Apraxin. 

^ Born 1681, son of Jonas and Anna Bering, whom a petition describes, in 1719, 
as "old, miserable, decrepit people, no way able to help ourselves." 

' He fought in Black Sea wars of 171 1 5 and fi-om lieutenant-captain became 
captain of the second rank by 1 71 7, when Russians, jealous of the foreigner, blocked 



I 



VITUS BERING, THE DANE 9 

The scientists of every city in Europe were in a fret 
over the mythical Straits of Anian, supposed to be 
between Asia and America, and over the yet more 
mythical Gamaland, supposed to be visible on the way 
to New Spain. To all this jangling of words without 
knowledge Peter paid no heed. "You will go and 
obtain some reliable information," he commands Be- 
ring. Neither did he pay any heed to the fact that the 
ports of Kamchatka on the Pacific were six thousand 
miles by river and mountain and tundra and desert 
through an unknown country from St. Petersburg. 
It would take from three to five years to transport 
material across two continents by caravan and flatboat 
and dog sled. Tribute of food and fur would be re- 
quired from Kurd and Tartar and wild Siberian tribe. 
More than a thousand horses must be requisitioned 
for the caravans ; more than two thousand leathern 
sacks made for the flour. Twenty or thirty boats 
must be constructed to raft down the inland rivers. 
There were forests to be traversed for hundreds of 
miles, where only the keenest vigilance could keep the 
wolf packs off the heels of the travellers. And when 
the expedition should reach the tundras of eastern 
Siberia, there was the double danger of the Chukchee 
tribes on the north, hostile as the American Indians, 
and of the Siberian exile population on the south, 
branded criminals, political malcontents, banditti of 

his promotion. He demanded promotion or discharge 5 and withdrew to Finland, where 
the Czar's Kamchatkan expedition called him from retirement. 



lo VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

the wilderness, outcasts of nameless crimes beyond 
the pale of law. It needed no prophet to foresee 
such people would thwart, not help, the expedition. 
And when the shores of Okhotsk were reached, a fort 
must be built to winter there. And a vessel for inland 
seas must be constructed to cross to the Kamchatka 
peninsula of the North Pacific. And the peninsula, 
which sticks out from Asia as Norway projects from 
Europe, must be crossed with provisions — a distance 
of some two hundred miles by dog trains over moun- 
tains higher than the American Rockies. And once 
on the shores of the Pacific itself, another fort must 
be built on the east side of the Kamchatka peninsula. 
And the two double-decker vessels must be constructed 
to voyage over the sleepy swell of the North Pacific to 
that mythical realm of mist like a blanket, and strange, 
unearthly rumblings smoking up from the cold Arctic 
sea, with the red light of a flame through the gray haze, 
and weird voices, as if the fog wraith were luring sea- 
men to destruction. These were mere details. Peter 
took no heed of impossibles. Neither did Bering; 
for he was in the prime of his honor, forty-four years 
of age. "You will go," commanded the Czar, and 
Bering obeyed. 

Barely had the spirit of Peter the Great passed from 
this life, in 1725, when Bering's forces were travelling 
in midwinter from St. Petersburg to cross Siberia to 
the Pacific, on what is known as the First Expedition.^ 

1 The expedition left St. Petersburg February 5th. 



VITUS BERING, THE DANE ii 

Three years it took him to go from the west coast of 
Europe to the east coast of Asia, crossing from Okhotsk 
to Kamchatka, whence he sailed on the Qth of July, 
1728, with forty-four men and three Heutenants for 
the Arctic seas/ This voyage is unimportant, except 
as the kernel out of which grew the most famous 
expedition on the Pacific coast. Martin Spanberg, 
another Danish navigator, huge of frame, vehement, 
passionate, tyrannical but dauntless, always followed 
by a giant hound ready to tear any one who approached 
to pieces, and Alexei ChirikofF, an able Russian, 
were seconds in command. They encountered all the 
difficulties to be expected transporting ships, rigging, 
and provisions across two continents. Spanberg and 
his men, winter-bound in East Siberia, were reduced 
to eating their dog harness and shoe-straps for food 
before they came to the trail of dead horses that 
marked Bering's path to the sea, and guided them 
to the fort at Okhotsk. 

Bering did exactly as Czar Peter had ordered. He 
built the two-deckers at Kamchatka. Then he fol- 
lowed the coast northward past St. Lawrence Island, 
which he named, to a point where the shore seemed to 
turn back on itself northwestward at 67° 18', which 
proved to Bering that Asia and America were not 



1 The midshipman of this voyage was Peter Chaplin, whose journal was deposited 
in the Naval College of the Admiralty, St. Petersburg. Berg gives a summary of this 
journal. A translation by Dall is to be found in Appendix ig, Coast Sur-vey, Wash- 
ington, i8go. 



12 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

united.^ And they had found no "Gamaland," no 
new world wedged in between Asia and America. 
Twice they were within only forty miles of America, 
touching at St. Lawrence Island, but the fog hung like 
a blanket over the sea as they passed through the 
waters now known as Bering Straits. They saw no 
continent eastward; and Bering was compelled to 
return with no knowledge but that Russia did not 
extend into America. And yet, there were definite 
signs of land eastward of Kamchatka — driftwood, 
seaweed, sea-birds. Before setting out for St. Peters- 
burg in 1729, he had again tried to sail eastward to the 
Gamaland of the maps, but again foul weather had 
driven him back. 

It was the old story of the savants and Christopher 
Columbus in an earlier day. Bering's conclusions 
were different from the moonshine of the schools. 
There was no "Gamaland" in the sea. There was in 
the maps. The learned men of St. Petersburg ridi- 
culed the Danish sailor. The fog was supposed to 
have concealed "Gamaland." There was nothinp; for 
Bering but to retire in ignominy or prove his conclu- 
sions. He had arrived in St. Petersburg in March, 
1730. He had induced the court to undertake a 
second expedition by April of the same year." 

1 A great dispute has waged among the finical academists, where the Serdze Kamen 
of this trip really was ; the Russian observations varying greatly owing to fog and rude 
instruments. Lauridsen quarrels with Midler on this score. Miiller was one of the 
theorists whose wrongheadedness misled Bering. 

' It was in i 730 that Gvozdef 's report of a strange land between 65° and 66'' became 
current. Whether this land was America, Gamaland, or Asia, the savants could not know. 



VITUS BERING, THE DANE 13 

And for this second expedition, the court, the senate, 
the admiralty, and the academy of sciences decided 
to provide with a lavish profusion that w^ould dazzle 
the vs^orld with the brilliancy of Russian exploits. 
Russia was in the mood to do things. The young 
savants who thronged her capital were heady with 
visionary theories that were to astonish the rest of 
mortals. Scientists, artisans, physicians, monks, 
Cossacks, historians, made up the motley roll of con- 
flicting influences under Bering's command; but 
because Bering was a Dane, this command was not 
supreme. He must convene a council of the Russian 
officers under him, submit all his plans to their vote, 
then abide by their decision. Yet he alone must 
carry responsibility for blunders. And as the days 
went on, details of instructions rolling out from ad- 
miralty, senate, and academy were like an avalanche 
gathering impetus to destruction from its weight. He 
was to establish new industries in Siberia. He was to 
chart the whole Arctic coast line of Asia. He was to 
Christianize the natives. He was to provide the trav- 
elling academicians with luxurious equipment, though 
some of them had forty wagon-loads of instruments 
and carried a peripatetic library. 

Early in 1733, the Second Expedition set out from 
St. Petersburg in detachments to cross Siberia. There 
were Vitus Bering, the commander, Chirikoff' and 
Spanberg, his two seconds, eight lieutenants, sixteen 
mates, twelve physicians, seven priests, carpenters, 



14 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

bakers, Cossacks, sailors, — in all, five hundred and 
eighty men.^ Now, if it was difficult to transport 
a handful of attendants across Siberia for the first 
simple voyage, what was it to convoy this rabble 
composed of self-important scientists bent on proving 
impossible theories, of underling officers each of whom 
considered himself a czar, of wives and children un- 
used to such travel, of priests whose piety took the 
extraordinary form of knouting subordinates to death, 
of Cossacks who drank and gambled and brawled at 
every stopping place till half the lieutenants in the 
company had crossed swords in duels, of workmen 
who looked on the venture as a mad banishment, 
and only watched for a chance to desert ? 

Scouts went scurrying ahead with orders for the 
Siberian Cossacks to prepare wintering quarters for 
the on-coming host, and to levy tribute on the inhabit- 
ants for provision; but in Siberia, as the Russians 
say, "God is high in the Heaven, and the Czar is 
jar away;" and the Siberian governors raised not a 
finger to prepare for Bering. 

Spanberg left St. Petersburg in February, 1733. 
Bering followed in March; and all summer the long 
caravans of slow-moving pack horses — as many as 
four thousand in a line — wound across the desert 
wastes of West Siberia. 



^ It is from the works of Gme/in, Miil/er, and Steller, scientists named to accom- 
pany the expedition, that the most connected accounts are obtained. The " menagerie," 
some one has called this collection of scientists 



VITUS BERING, THE DANE 15 

Only the academists dallied in St. Petersburg, kiss- 
ing Majesty's hand farewell, basking in the sudden 
sunburst of short notoriety, driving Bering almost 
mad by their exorbitant demands for luxuriously ap- 
pointed barges to carry them down the Volga. Winter 
was passed at Tobolsk; but May of 1734 witnessed 
a firing of cannon, a blaring of trumpets, a clinking 
of merry glasses among merry gentlemen; for the cara- 
vans were setting out once more to the swearing of the 
Cossacks, the complaining of the scientists, the brawl- 
ing of the underling officers, the silent chagrin of the 
endlessly patient Bering. One can easily believe that 
the God-speed from the Siberians was sincere; for the 
local governors used the orders for tribute to enrich 
themselves; and the country-side groaned under a 
heavy burden of extortion. The second winter was 
passed at Yakutsk, where the ships that were to chart 
the Arctic coast of Siberia were built and launched 
with crews of some hundred men. 

It was the end of June, 1735, before the main forces 
were under way again for the Pacific. From Yakutsk 
to Okhotsk on the Pacific, the course was down the 
Lena, up the Aldan River, up the Maya, up the Yu- 
doma, across the Stanovoi Mountains, down the Urak 
River to the sea. A thousand Siberian exiles were 
compelled to convoy these boats. ^ Not a roof had 
been prepared to house the forces in the mountains. 
Men and horses were torn to pieces by the timber 

1 Many of the workmen died of their hardships at this stage of the journey. 



i6 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

wolves. Often, for days at a time, the only rations 
were carcasses of dead horses, roots, flour, and rice. 
Winter barracks had to be built between the rivers, for 
the navigable season was short. In May the rivers 
broke up in spring flood. Then, the course was 
against a boiling torrent. Thirty men could not tug 
a boat up the Yudoma. They stood in ice-water up 
to their waists lifting the barges over the turbulent 
places. Sores broke out on the feet of horses and 
men. Three years it took to transport all the sup- 
plies and ships' rigging from the Lena to the Pacific, 
with wintering barracks constructed at each stopping 
place. 

At Okhotsk on the Pacific, Major-General Pissar- 
jeff was harbor master. This old reprobate, once a 
favorite of Peter the Great, had been knouted, branded 
and exiled for conspiracy, forbidden even to conceal 
his brand ; and now, he let loose all his seventy years 
of bitterness on Bering. He not only had not made 
preparation to house the explorers; but he refused to 
permit them inside the stockades of the miserable 
huts at Okhotsk, which he called his fort. When they 
built a fort of their own outside, he set himself to 
tantalize the two Danes, Bering and Spanberg, knout- 
ing their men, sending coureurs with false accusations 
against Bering to St. Petersburg, actually counter- 
manding their orders for supplies from the Cossacks. 
Spanberg would have finished the matter neatly with 
a sharp sword; but Bering forbore, and Pissarjeff^ 



VITUS BERING, THE DANE 17 

was ultimately replaced by a better harbor master. 
The men set to work cutting the timber for the 
ships that were to cross from Okhotsk to the east 
shore of Kamchatka; for Bering's ships of the first 
voyage could now be used only as packet boats. 

Not till the fourth of June, 1741, had all preparations 
ripened for the fulfilment of Czar Peter's dying wishes 
to extend his empire into America. Two vessels, the 
St. Peter and the St. Paul, rode at anchor at Petro- 
paulovsk in the Bay of Avacha on the east coast of 
Kamchatka. On the shore was a little palisaded fort 
of some fifty huts, a barrack, a chapel, a powder maga- 
zine. Early that morning, solemn religious services 
had been held to invoke the blessing of Heaven on the 
voyagers. Now, the chapel bell was set ringing. 
Monks came singing down to the water's edge. Can- 
non were fired. Cheer on cheer set the echoes rolling 
among the white domed mountains. There was a 
rattling of anchor chains, a creaking of masts and 
yard-arms. The sails fluttered out bellying full; and 
with a last, long shout, the ships glided out before 
the wind to the lazy swell of the Pacific for the dis- 
covery of new worlds. 

And why not new worlds ? That was the question 
the officers accompanying Bering asked themselves 
as the white peaks of Kamchatka faded on the ofl!ing. 
Certainly, in the history of the world, no expedition 
had set out with greater prestige. Eight years had it 



i8 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

taken to cross Siberia from St. Petersburg to the Pa- 
cific. A line of forts across two continents had been 
built for winter quarters. Rivers had been bridged; 
as many as forty boats knocked together in a single 
year to raft down the Siberian torrents. Two hundred 
thousand dollars in modern money had been spent 
before the Pacific was reached. In all, nine ships had 
been built on the Pacific to freight supplies across 
from Okhotsk to the eastern side of Kamchatka, tw^o 
to carry Bering to the new continent of "Gamaland" 
which the savants persisted in putting on the maps, 
three to explore the region between Russia and Japan. 
Now, Bering knew there was no "Gamaland" except 
in the ignorant, heady imaginings of the foolish 
geographers. So did Alexei ChirikoflP, the Russian 
second assistant. So did Spanberg, the Dane, third 
in command, who had coasted the Pacific in charting 
Japan. 

Roughly speaking, the expedition had gradually 
focussed to three points: (i) the charting of the 
Arctic coast; (2) the exploration of Japan; (3) the 
finding of what lay between Asia and America. Some 
two hundred men, of whom a score had already per- 
ished of scurvy, had gone down the Siberian rivers to 
the Arctic coast. Spanberg, the Dane, with a hundred 
others, had thoroughly charted Japan, and had seen 
his results vetoed by the authorities at St. Petersburg 
because there was no Gamaland. Bering, himself, 
undertook the voyage to America. All the month of 



VITUS BERING, THE DANE 19 

May, council after council had been held at Avacha 
Bay to determine which way Bering's two ships should 
sail. By the vote of this council, Bering, the com- 
mander, was compelled to abide; and the mythical 
Gamaland proved his evil star. 

The maps of the D'Isles, the famous geographers, 
contained a Gamaland; and Louis la Croyere d'Isle, 
relative of the great map maker, who had knocked 
about in Canada and was thought to be an authority 
on American matters, was to accompany Chirikoff, 
Bering's first lieutenant. At the councils, these maps 
were hauled out. It was a matter of family pride 
with the D'Isles to find that Gamaland. Bering and 
Chirikoff may have cursed all scientists, as Cook, the 
great navigator, cursed savants at a later day; but 
they must bow to the decision of the council; and the 
decision was to sail south-southeast for Gamaland. 
And yet, there could have been no bitterness in Ber- 
ing's feelings ; for he knew that the truth must triumph. 
He would be vindicated, whatever came; and the spell 
of the North was upon him with its magic beckon- 
ing on — on — on to the unknown, to the unexplored, 
to the undreamed. All that the discoveries of Colum- 
bus gave to the world, Bering's voyage might give to 
Russia; for he did not know that the La Verendryes 
of New France had already penetrated w^est as far as 
the Rockies; and he did know that half a continent 
yet lay unexplored, unclaimed, on the other side of 
the Pacific. 



20 



VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 





«•" 








■•. .'>"' 


/V 


\ 




\ ,J 


J^ 


V 


V 




^,i 


l^olirtoTSifrttiit 


)-? 


»\»_,7 


A 



s I 3 h d f 




Bfn h, HMti^Jr CC 



Map of Course 

But with boats that carried only one hundred casks 
of water, and provisions for but five months, the deci- 
sion to sail south-southeast was a deplorable waste of 
precious time. It would lead to the Spanish posses- 
sions, not to the unknown North. On Bering's boat, 
the St. Petevy was a crew of seventy-seven, Lieutenant 
Waxel, second in command, George William Steller, 
the famous scientist, Bering's friend, on board. On 
the St. Paul, under the stanch, level-headed Russian 
lieutenant, Alexei Chirikoff, were seventy-six men, 
with La Croyere d'Isle as astronomer. Not the least 



VITUS BERING, THE DANE 



21 




followed by Bering. 

complicating feature of the case was the personnel of 
the crews. For the most part, they were branded 
criminals and malcontents. From the first they had 
regarded the Bering expedition with horror. They 
had joined it under compulsion for only six years; 
and the exploration was now in its eleventh year. 
Spanberg, the other Dane, with his brutal tongue and 
constant recourse to the knout, who had gone to St. 
Petersburg to report on Japan, they cordially hated. 
ChirikofF, the Russian, was a universal favorite, and 
Bering, the supreme commander, was loved for his 



22 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

kindness; but Bering's commands were subject to 
veto by the Russian underlings; and the Russian 
underHng officers kept up a constant brawl of duels 
and gaming and drink. No wonder the bluff Dane 
sailed out from the snow-rimmed peaks of Avacha 
Bay with dark forebodings. He had carried a load of 
petty instructions issued by ignoramus savants for 
eight years. He had borne eight years of nagging 
from court and senate and academy. He had been 
criticised for blunders of others' making. He had 
been set to accomplish a Herculean task with tied 
hands. He had been threatened with fines and court 
martial for the delay caused by the quarrels of his 
under officers to whom he was subject. He had been 
deprived of salary for three years and accused of pil- 
fering from public funds. His wife, who had by this 
time returned with the wives of the other officers to 
Russia, had actually been searched for hidden booty.* 
And now, after toils and hardships untold, only five 
months' provisions were left for the ships sailing from 
Kamchatka; and the blockhead underlings were com- 
pelling a waste of those provisions by sailing in the 
wrong direction. If the worst came, could Bering 
hold his men with those tied hands of his ^ 

The commander shrugged his shoulders and sig- 
nalled Chirikoff, the Russian, on the St. Paul, to lead 
the way. They must find out there was no Gamaland 

1 Berg sayi Bering's two sons, Thomas and Unos, were also with him in Siberi:^. 



VITUS BERING, THE DANE 23 

for themselves, those obstinate Russians ! The long 
swell of the Pacific meets them as they sheer out from 
the mountain-girt harbor. A dip of the sails to the 
swell of the rising wind, and the snowy heights of 
Avacha Bay are left on the offing. The thunder of 
the surf against the rocky caves of Kamchatka coast 
fades fainter. The myriad birds become fewer. Stel- 
ler, the scientist, leans over the rail to listen if the 
huge sperm whale, there, "hums" as it "blows." 
The white rollers come from the north, rolling — 
rolling down to the tropics. A gray thing hangs over 
the northern offing, a grayish brown thing called 
"fog" of which they will know more anon. The 
grayish brown thing means storm; and the "porps" 
tumbling, floundering, somerseting round the ships in 
circles, mean storm ; and Chirikofi^, far ahead there, 
signals back doubtfully to know if they shouldn't 
keep together to avoid being lost in the gathering fog. 
The Dane shrugs his shoulders and looks to the north. 
The grayish brown thing has darkened, thickened, 
spread out impalpably, and by the third day, a north- 
ling wind is whistling through the riggings with a rip. 
Sails are furled. The white rollers roll no lono-er. 
They lash with chopped-off tops flying backward; 
and the St. Peter is churning about, shipping sea after 
sea with the crash of thunder. That was what the 
fog meant; and it is all about them, in a hurricane 
now, stinging cold, thick to the touch, washing out 
every outline but sea — sea! 



24 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

Never mind ! They are nine days out. It is the 
twelfth of June. They are down to 46° and no Gama- 
land ! The blockheads have stopped spreading their 
maps in the captain's cabin. One can see a smile 
wreathing in the whiskers of the Dane. Six hundred 
miles south of Kamchatka and no Gamaland ! The 
council convenes again. It is decided to turn about, 
head north, and say no more of Gamaland. But when 
the fog, that has turned hurricane, lifts, the consort 
ship, the St. Paul, is lost. ChirikoflF's vessel has dis- 
appeared. Up to 49°, they go; but still no ChirikofF, 
and no Gamaland ! Then the blunder-makers, as 
usual, blunder more. It is dangerous to go on without 
the sister ship. The council convenes. Bering must 
hark back to 46° and hunt for ChirikofF. So passes 
the whole month of June. Out of five months' pro- 
visions, one wasted, the odium on Bering, the Dane. 

It was noticed that after the ship turned south, the 
commander looked ill and depressed. He became in- 
tolerant of opposition or approach. Possibly to avoid 
irritation, he kept to his cabin ; but he issued per- 
emptory orders for the St. Peter to head back north. 

In a few days, Bering was confined to bed with 
that overwhelming physical depression and fear, that 
precede the scourge most dreaded by seamen — scurvy. 
Lieutenant Waxel now took command. Waxel had 
all a sailor's contempt for the bookful blockheads, who 
wrench fact to fit theory; and deadly enmity arose 



VITUS BERING, THE DANE 25 

between him and Steller, the scientist. By the middle 
of July, the fetid drinking water was so reduced 
that the crew was put on half allowance; but on 
the sleepy, fog-blanketed swell of the Pacific slipping 
past Bering's wearied eyes, there were so many signs 
of land — birds, driftwood, seaweed — that the com- 
mander ordered the ship hove to each night for fear 
of grounding. 

On the thirteenth of July, the council of underlings 
had so far relinquished all idea of a Gamaland, that 
it was decided to steer continuously north. Some- 
time between the i6th and 20th, the fog lifted like a 
curtain. Such a vision met the gaze of the stolid sea- 
men as stirred the blood of those phlegmatic Russians. 
It was the consummation of all their labor, what they 
had toiled across Siberia to see, what they had hoped 
against hope in spite of the learned jargon of the 
geographers. There loomed above the far horizon of 
the north sea what might have been an immense opal 
dome suspended in mid-heaven. One can guess how 
the lookout strained keen eyes at this grand, crumpled 
apex of snow jagged through the clouds like the ce- 
lestial tent peak of some giant race; how the shout of 
"land" went up, how officers and underlings flocked 
round Bering with cries and congratulations. "We 
knew it was land beyond a doubt on the sixteenth," 
says Steller. "Though I have been in Kamchatka, I 
have never seen more lofty mountains." The shore 
was broken everywhere, showing inlets and harbors. 



26 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

Everybody congratulated the commander, but he only 
shrugged shoulders, saying: "We think we've done big 
things, eh ? but who knows ? Nobody realizes where 
this is, or the distance we must sail back. Winds 
may be contrary. We don't know this land; and we 
haven't provisions to winter." 

The truth is — the maps having failed, Bering was 
good enough seaman to know these uncharted signs 
of a continent indicated that the St. Peter was hope- 
lessly lost. Sixteen years of nagging care, harder 
to face than a line of cannon, had sucked Bering's 
capacity of resistance like a vampire. That buoyancy, 
which lifts man above Anxious Fright, had been sapped. 
The shadowy elemental powers — physical weakness, 
disease, despair — were closing round the explorer like 
the waves of an eternal sea. 

The boat found itself in a wonder world, that beg- 
gared romance. The great peak, which they named 
St. Elias, hung above a snowy row of lesser ridges in a 
dome of alabaster. Icebergs, like floating palaces, 
came washing down from the long line of precipitous 
shore. As they neared anchorage at an island now 
known as Kyak, they could see billows of ferns, grasses, 
\ lady's slippers, rhododendrons, bluebells, forget-me- 
nots, rippling in the wind. Perhaps they saw those 
palisades of ice, that stretch like a rampart northward 
along the main shore west of St. Elias. 

The St. Peter moved slowly landward against a 
head wind. Khitroff' and Steller put off in the small 



VITUS BERING, THE DANE 27 

boats with fifteen men to reconnoitre. Both found 
traces of inhabitants — timbered huts, fire holes, shells, 
smoked fish, footprints in the grass. Steller left 
some kettles, knives, glass beads, and trinkets in the 
huts to replace the possessions of the natives, which 
the Russians took. Many years later, another voyager 
met an old Indian, who told of seeing Bering's ship 
anchor at Kyak Island when he was a boy; but the 
terrified Indians had fled, only returning to find the 
presents in the huts, when the Russians had gone.^ 
Steller was as wild as a child out of school, and ac- 
companied by only one Cossack went bounding over 
the island collecting specimens and botanizing. Khit- 
roff^, meanwhile, filled water-casks; but on July 21, 
the day after the anchorage, a storm-wind began 
whistling through the rigging. The rollers came wash- 
ing down from the ice wall of the coast and the far 
offing showed the dirty fog that portended storm. 
Only half the water-casks had been filled ; but there 
was a brisk seaward breeze. Without warning, con- 
trary to his custom of consulting the other officers, 
Bering appeared on deck pallid and ashen from dis- 
ease, and peremptorily ordered anchors up. 

In vain Steller stormed and swore, accusing the 
chief of pusillanimous homesickness, "of reducing his 
explorations to a six hours' anchorage on an island 
shore," "of coming from Asia to carry home American 
water." The commander had had enough of vacil- 

1 Sauer relates this incident. 



28 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

lation, delay, interference. One-third of the crew was 
aiHng. Provisions for only three months were in the 
hold. The ship was off any known course more than 
two thousand miles from any known port; and con- 
trary winds might cause delay or drive the vessel on 
the countless reefs that lined this strange coast, like 
a ploughed field. 

Dense clouds and a sleety rain settled over the sea, 
washing out every outline, as the St. Peter began her 
westward course. But what baffled both Bering and 
the officers was the fact that the coast trended, not 
north, but south. They were coasting that long 
peninsula of Alaska that projects an arm for a thou- 
sand miles southwestward into the Pacific. 

The roar of the rollers came from the reefs. Through 
the blanketing fog they could discern, on the north, 
island after island, ghostlike through the mist, rocky, 
towering, majestic, with a thunder of surf among the 
caves, a dim outline of mountains above, like Loki, 
Spirit of Evil, smiling stonily at the dark forces closing 
round these puny men. All along Kadiak, the roily 
waters told of reefs. The air was heavy with fogs 
thick to the touch; and violent winds constantly 
threatened a sudden shift that might drive the vessel 
on the rocks. At midnight on August i,they suddenly 
found themselves with only three feet of water below 
the keel. Fortunately there was no wind, but the fog 
was like ink. By swinging into a current, that ran a 
mill-race, they were carried out to eighteen fathoms 



VITUS BERING, THE DANE 



29 



of water, where they anchored till daybreak. They 
called this place Foggy Island. To-day it is known as 
Ukamok. 

The underlings now came sharply to their senses 
and, at the repeatedly convened and distracted councils 




The St. Peter and St. Paul, from a rough sketch by Bering's comrade, 
Steller, the scientist. 

between July 25 and August 10, decided that there was 
only one thing to do — sail at once for the home port 
of Kamchatka. The St. Peter was tossing about in 
frightful winds among reefs and hurricane fog like a 
cork. Half the crew lay ill and helpless of scurvy, 



30 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

and only two months' provisions remained for a voyage 
of two thousand miles. The whole crew signed the 
resolution to go home. 

Only twenty-five casks of water remained. On 
August 30 the St. Peter anchored off a group of thirteen 
bald, bare, treeless rocks. It was thought that if some 
of the scurvy-stricken sailors could be carried ashore, 
they might recover. One, Shumagin, died as he was 
lifted ashore. This was the first death, and his name 
was given to the islands. Bering himself was so ill 
he could not stand. Twenty emaciated men w^re laid 
along the shore. Steller hurried off to hunt anti- 
scorbutic plants, while Waxel, who had taken command, 
and Khitroff ordered the water-casks filled. Unfortu- 
nately the only pool they could find was connected 
with an arm of the sea. The water was brackish, 
and this afterward increased disease. 

A fatality seemed to hang over the wonder world 
where they wandered. Voices were heard in the 
storm, rumblings from the sea. Fire could be seen 
through the fog. Was this fire from volcanoes or 
Indians ? And such a tide-rip thundered along the 
rocks as shook the earth and set the ship trembling. 
Waxel knew they must not risk delay by going to 
explore, but by applying to Bering, who lay in his 
berth unconscious of the dangers on this coast, Khit- 
roff gained permission to go from the vessel on a yawl 
with five sailors; but by the time he had rowed against 
head winds to the scene of the fire, the Indians had 



VITUS BERING, THE DANE 31 

fled, and such beach combers were crashing ashore, 
KhitrofF dare not risk going back to the ship. In vain 
Waxel ground his teeth with rage, signalled, and 
waited. "The wind seemed to issue from a flue," 
says Steller, "with such a whistling and roaring and 
rumbling that we expected to lose mast and rudder, 
or be crushed among the breakers. The dashings of 
the sea sounded like a cannon." 

The fact was, Khitroff''s yawl had been smashed to 
kindling wood against the rocks; and the six half- 
drowned Russians were huddling together waiting 
for help when Waxel took the other small boat and 
went to the rescue. Barely had this been eff^ected at 
the cost of four days' delay, in which the ship might 
have made five hundred miles toward home, when 
natives were seen paddling out in canoes, gesticulating 
for the white men to come ashore. Waxel lowered 
away in the small boat with nine armed men to pay 
the savages a visit. Close ashore, he beckoned the 
Indians to wade out; but they signalled him in turn 
to land, and he ordered three men out to moor the boat 
to a rock. All went well between Russians and Ind- 
ians, presents being exchanged, till a chief screwed 
up his courage to paddle out to Waxel in the boat. 
With characteristic hospitality, Waxel at once prof- 
fered some Russian brandy, which, by courtesy among 
all Western sailors, is always known as "chain light- 
ning." The chief took but one gulp of the liquid 
fire, when with a wild yell he spat it out, shouted that 
he had been poisoned, and dashed ashore. 



32 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

The three Russians succeeded in gaining Waxel's 
boat, but the Indians grabbed the mooring ropes 
and seized the Chukchee interpreter, whom Waxel 
had brought from Siberia. Waxel ordered the rope 
cut, but the Chukchee interpreter called out pitifully 
to be saved. Quick as flash, the Russians fired two 
muskets in midair. At the crash that echoed among 
the cliff's, the Indians fell prostrate with fear, and the 
interpreter escaped ; but six days had been wasted 
in this futile visit to the natives. 

Scarcely had they escaped this island, when such a 
hurricane broke over the St. Peter for seventeen days 
that the ship could only scud under bare poles before 
a tornado wind that seemed to be driving north-north- 
west. The ship was a chip in a maelstrom. There 
were only fifteen casks of water fit to drink. All 
food was exhausted but mouldy sea-biscuits. One 
sailor a day was now dying of scurvy, and those left 
were so weak that they had no power to man the ship. 
The sailors were so emaciated they had to be carried 
back and forward to the rudder, and the underling 
officers were quarrelling among themselves. The 
crew dared not hoist sails, because not a man of the 
St. Peter had the physical strength to climb and lower 



1 See Miilkr, p. 93, 1764 edition: "The men, notwithstanding want, misery, 
sickness, were obliged to work continually in the cold and wet ; and the sickness was so 
dreadful that the sailors who governed the rudder were obliged to be led to it by others, 
who could hardly walk. They durst not carry much sail, because there was nobody to 
lower them in case of need, and they were so thin a violent wind would have torn them 
to pieces. The rain now changed to hail and snow." 



VITUS BERING, THE DANE 33 

The rain turned to sleet. The sleet froze to the 
rotting sails, to the ice-logged hull, to the wan yard- 
arms frost-white like ghosts. At every lurch of the sea 
slush slithered down from the rigging on the shivering 
seamen. The roar of the breakers told of a shallow 
sea, yet mist veiled the sky, and they were above waters 
whose shallows drop to sudden abysmal depths of 
three thousand fathoms. Sheets of smoking vapor 
rose from the sea, sheets of flame-tinged smoke from 
the crevasses of land volcanoes which the fogs hid. 
Out of the sea came the hoarse, strident cry of the sea- 
lion, and the walrus, and the hairy seal. It was as if 
the poor Russians had sailed into some under-world. 
The decks were slippery as glass, the vessel shrouded 
in ice. Over all settled that unspeakable dread of 
impending disaster, which is a symptom of scurvy, 
and saps the fight that makes a man fit to survive. 

Waxel, alone, held the vessel up to the wind. Where 
were they ? Why did this coasting along unknown 
northern islands not lead to Kamchatka .? 

The councils were no longer the orderly conferences 
of savants over cut-and-dried maps. They were bed- 
lam. Panic was in the marrow of every man, even the 
passionate Steller, who thought all the while they were 
on the coast of Kamchatka and made loud complaint 
that the expedition had been misled by "unscrupu- 
lous leaders." 

At eight o'clock on the morning of October 30 it 
was seen that the ice-clogged ropes on the starboard 

D 



34 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

side had been snapped by the wind Hke dry sticks. 
Offerings, vows, prayers went up from the stricken 
crew. Piety became a very real thing. The men 
prayed aloud and conferred on ways to win the favor 
of God. The colder weather brought one relief. The 
fog Hfted and the air was clear. The wind veered 
northeast, and on November 4, to their inexpressible 
joy, a dim outline sharpened to hard, clear horizon; 
and the gazing crew gradually saw a high, mountainous 
coast become clear beyond doubt directly ahead six- 
teen miles. Surely, this was Kamchatka ? Surely, 
God had heard their vows ? The sick crawled on 
hands and knees above the hatchway to see land once 
more, and with streaming eyes thanked Heaven for 
the escape from doom. Grief became joy; gruff, 
happy, hilarious laughter; for a few hidden casks of 
brandy were brought out to celebrate the end of their 
miseries, and each man began pointing out certain 
headlands that he thought he recognized. But this 
ecstasy was fool joy born of desperation. As the ship 
rounded northeastward, a strangeness came over the 
scene; a chill over the good cheer — a numbing, 
silent, unspeakable dread over the crew. These tur- 
bulent waters running a mill-race between reefs looked 
more like a channel between two islands than open 
coast. The men could not utter a word. They hoped 
against hope. They dare not voice their fears. That 
night, the St. Peter stood off from land in case of storm. 
Topsails were furled, and the wind had ripped the other 



VITUS BERING, THE DANE s5 

sails to tatters, that flared and beat dismally all night 
against the cordage. One can imagine the anxiety of 
that long night with the roar of the breakers echoing 
angrily from shore, the whistle of the wind through the 
rotten rigging, the creaking of the timbers to the crash 
and growl and rebound of the tide. Clear, refulgent 
with sunshine like the light of creation's first day, the 
sting of ozone in the air, and the freshness of a scene 
never before witnessed by human eyes — dawned the 
morning of November 5. 

The shore was of black, adamant rock rising sheer 
from the sea in a rampart wall. Reefs, serried, rank 
on rank, like sentinels, guarded approach to the coast 
in jagged masses, that would rip the bottom from any 
keel like the teeth of a saw; and over these rolled the 
roaring breakers with a clutch to the back-wash that 
bade the gazing sailors beware. Birds, birds in myriads 
upon myriads, screamed and circled over the eerie 
heights of the beetling cliffs. This did not look like 
Kamchatka. These birds were not birds of the 
Asiatic home port. These cliffs were not like the snow- 
rimmed mountains of Avacha Bay. 

Waxel called a council. 

Officers and men dragged themselves to Bering's 
cabin. Waxel had already canvassed all hands to 
vote for a landing to winter on these shores. This, 
the dying Bering opposed with all his might. "We 
must be almost home," he said. "We still have six 
casks of water, and the foremast. Having risked so 



36 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

much, let us risk three days more, let us risk every- 
thing to reach Avacha Bay." Poor Bering ! Had his 
advice been followed, the saddest disaster of northern 
seas might have been averted; for they v^ere less than 
ten days' run from the home harbor; but inspired by 
fool hopes born of fear, like the old marsh lights that 
used to lure men to the quicksands — Waxel and 
Khitroff actually persuaded themselves this was Kam- 
chatka, and when one lieutenant, Ofzyn, who knew the 
north well from charting the Arctic coast, would have 
spoken in favor of Bering's view, he was actually clubbed 
and thrown from the cabin. The crew voted as a man 
to land and winter on this coast. Little did they know 
that vote was their own death warrant. 



CHAPTER II 

1741-1743 
CONTINUATION OF BERING, THE DANE 

Frightful Sufferings of the Castaways on the Commander Islands — 
The Vessel smashed in a Winter Gale, the Sick are dragged for 
Refuge into Pits of Sand — Here, Bering perishes, and the Crew- 
Winter — The Consort Ship under ChirikofF Ambushed — How 
the Castaways reach Home 

Without pilot or captain, the ^S"^. Peter drifted to 
the swirling current of the sea along a high, rocky, 
forbidding coast where beetling precipices towered 
sheer two thousand feet above a white fret of reefs, 
that gave the ocean the appearance of a ploughed field. 
The sick crawled mutely back to their berths. Bering 
was past caring what came and only semiconscious. 
Waxel, who had compelled the crew to vote for land- 
ing here under the impression born of his own despair, 

— that this was the coast of Avacha Bay, Kamchatka, 

— saw with dismay in the shores gliding past the keel 
momentary proofs that he was wrong. Poor Waxel 
had fought desperately against the depression that 
precedes scurvy; but now, with a dumb hopelessness 
settling over the ship, the invisible hand of the scourge 

37 



38 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

was laid on him, too. He went below decks completely 
fordone. 

The underling officers still upon their feet, whose 
false theories had led Bering into all this disaster, 
were now quarrelling furiously among themselves, 
blaming one another. Only Ofzyn, the lieutenant, 
who had opposed the landing, and Steller, the scientist, 
remained on the lookout with eyes alert for the impend- 
ing destruction threatened from the white fret of the 
endless reefs. Rocks rose in wild, jagged masses out 
of the sea. Deep V-shaped ravines, shadowy in the 
rising moonlight, seemed to recede into the rock wall 
of the coast, and only where a river poured out from 
one of these ravines did there appear to be any gap 
through the long lines of reefs where the surf boomed 
like thunder. The coast seemed to trend from north- 
west to southeast, and might have been from thirty to 
fifty miles long, with strange bizarre arches of rock 
overhanging endless fields of kelp and seaweed. The 
land was absolutely treeless except for willow brush- 
wood the size of one's finger. Lichens, moss, sphagnum, 
coated the rocks. Inland appeared nothing but bil- 
lowing reaches of sedges and shingle and grass. 

Suddenly Steller noticed that the ebb-tide was causing 
huge combing rollers that might dash the ship against 
the rocks. Rushing below decks he besought Bering's 
permission to sound and anchor. The early darkness 
of those northern latitudes had been followed by moon- 
light bright as day. Within a mile of the east shore, 



CONTINUATION OF BERING 



39 



Steller ordered the anchor dropped, but by this time, 
the rollers were smashing over decks with a quaking 
that seemed to tear the ship asunder. The sick were 
hurled from their berths. Officers rushed on deck to 
be swept from their feet by blasts of salt spray, and just 




Steller's Arch on Bering Island, named after the scientist Steller, 
of Bering's Expedition. 

ahead, through the moonlight, could be seen the sharp 
edge of a long reef where the beach combers ran with 
the tide-rip of a whirlpool. There is something in- 
expressibly terrifying even from a point of safety in 
these beach combers, clutching their long arms hun- 
grily for prey. The confusion of orders and counter- 



40 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

orders, which no man had strength to carry out, of 
terrified cries and prayers and oaths — was indescrib- 
able. The numb hopelessness was succeeded by sheer 
panic terror. Ofzyn threw out a second anchor that 
raked bottom. Then, another mountain roller thun- 
dering over the ship with a crash — and the first cable 
snapped like a pistol shot. The ship rebounded; 
then drove before the back-wash of the angry sea. 
With no fate possible but the wall of rocks ahead, the 
terrorized crew began heaving the dead overboard in 
the moonlight; but another roaring billow smashed 
the St. Peter squarely broadside. The second hawser 
ripped back with the whistling rebound of a whip-lash, 
and Ofzyn was in the very act of dropping the third 
and last anchor, when straight as a bullet to the mark, 
as if hag-ridden by the northern demons of sailor fear, 
hurled the St. Peter for the reef! A third time the 
beach combers crashed down like a falling mountain. 
When the booming sheets of blinding spray had cleared 
and the panic-stricken sailors could again see, the St. 
Peter was staggering stern foremost, shore ahead, like 
a drunken ship. Quick as shot, Ofzyn and Steller 
between them heaved over the last anchor. The 
flukes gripped — raked — then caught — and held. 

The ship lay rocking inside a reef in the very centre 
of a sheltered cove not six hundred yards from land. 
The beach comber had either swept her through a gap 
in the reef, or hurled her clear above the reefs into 
shelter. 



CONTINUATION OF BERING 41 

For seven hours the ship had battled against tide 
and counter-current. Now, at midnight, with the air 
clear as day, Steller had the small boat lowered and with 
another — some say Waxel, others Pleneser, the artist, 
or Ofzyn, of the Arctic expedition — rowed ashore to 
reconnoitre. Sometime between the evening of No- 
vember 5 and the morning of November 6, their eyes 
met such a view as might have been witnessed by an 
Alexander Selkirk, or Robinson Crusoe. The exact 
landing was four or five miles north of what is now 
known as Cape KhitroflF, below the centre of the east 
coast of Bering Island.^ Poor Waxel would have it, 
they were on the coast of Kamchatka, and spoke of 
sending messengers for help to Petropaulovsk on 
Avacha Bay; but, as they were to learn soon enough, 
the nearest point in Kamchatka was one hundred miles 
across the sea. Avacha Bay was two hundred miles 
away. And the Spanish possessions of America, 
three thousand. They found the landing place lit- 
erally swarming with animal life unknown to the world 
before. An enormous mammal, more than three tons 
in weight, with hind quarters like a whale, snout and 
fore fins resembling a cow, grazed in herds on the 
fields of sea-kelp and gazed languidly without fear 
on the newcomer — Man. This was the famous sea- 
cow described by the enthusiastic Steller, but long since 
extinct. Blue foxes swarmed round the very feet of the 

1 I adopt the views of Dr. Stejneger, of the National Museum, Washington, OB 
this point, as he has personally gone over every foot of the ground. 



42 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

men with such hungry boldness that half a dozen could 
be clubbed to death before the others scampered. 
Later, Steller was to see the seal rookeries, that were to 
bring so much wealth to the world, the sea-lions that 
roared along the rocks till the surf shook, the sea-otter 
whose rare pelt, more priceless than beaver or sable, 
was to cause the exploration and devastation of the 
northern half of the Pacific coast. 

The land was as it had appeared to the ship — 
utterly treeless except for trailing willows. The brooks 
were not yet frozen, and snow had barely powdered 
the mountains; but where the coves ran in back be- 
tween the mountains from the sea were gullies or 
ditches of sand and sedge. When Steller presently 
found a broken window casing of Kamchatka half 
buried in the sand, it gave Waxel some confidence 
about being on the mainland of Asia; but before Steller 
had finished his two days' reconnoitre, there was no mis- 
taking the fact — this was an island, and a barren one 
at the best, without tree or shelter; and here the cast- 
aways must winter. 

The only provisions now remaining to the crew were 
grease and mouldy flour. Steller at once went to work. 
Digging pits in the narrow gullies of sand, he covered 
these over with driftwood, the rotten sail-cloth, moss, 
mud, and foxskins. Cracks were then chinked up 
with clay and more foxskins. By the 8th of November 
he was ready to have the crew landed; but the ship 
rolled helpless as a log to the tide, and the few well 



I 

I 



CONTINUATION OF BERING 43 

men of the staff, without distinction of officers from 
sailors, had to stand waist-deep in ice-slush to steady 
the stretchers made of mast poles and sail-cloth, that 
received the sick lowered over decks. Many of the 
scurvy stricken had not been out of their berths for 
six weeks. The fearful depression and weakness, 
that forewarn scurvy, had been followed by the pains, 
the swollen limbs, the blue spots that presage death. 
A spongy excrescence covered the gums. The teeth 
loosened. The slightest noise was enough to throw 
the patient into a paroxysm of anguished fright; and 
some died on the decks immediately on contact with 
the cuttingly cold air. Others expired as they were 
lowered to the stretchers; others, as they were laid 
along the strip of sandy shore, where the bold foxes 
were already devouring the dead and could scarcely 
be driven off by the dying. In this way perished 
nine of the St. Peter's crew during the week of the 
landing. 

By November 10, all was in readiness for Bering's 
removal from the ship. As the end approached, his 
irritability subsided to a quieted cheerfulness; and 
he could be heard mumbling over thanks to God for 
the great success of his early life. Wrapped in furs, 
fastened to a stretcher, the Dane was lowered over the 
ship, carried ashore, and laid in a sand pit. All that 
day it had been dull and leaden; and just as Bering 
was being carried, it began to snow heavily. Steller 
occupied the sand pit next to the commander; and in 



44 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

addition to acting as cook and physician to the entire 
crew, became Bering's devoted attendant. 

By the 13th of November, a long sand pit had been 
roofed over as a sort of hospital with rug floor; and 
here Steller had the stricken sailors carried in from 
the shore. Poor Waxel, who had fought so bravely, 
was himself carried ashore on November 21. 

Daily, officers tramped inland exploring; and daily, 
the different reconnoitring parties returned with word 
that not a trace of human habitation, of wood, or the 
way to Kamchatka had been discovered. Another 
island there was to the east — now known as Copper 
Island — and two little islets of rock; but beyond 
these, nothing could be descried from the highest 
mountains but sea — sea. Bering Island, itself, is 
some fifty miles long by ten wide, very high at the 
south, very swampy at the north; but the Commander 
Group is as completely cut off from both Asia and 
America as if it were in another world. The climate 
was not intensely cold ; but it was so damp, the very 
clothing rotted ; and the gales were so terrific that the 
men could only leave the mud huts or yurts by crawl- 
ing on all fours; and for the first three weeks after the 
landing, blast on blast of northern hurricane swept 
over the islands. 

The poor old ship rode her best at anchor through 
the violent storms; but on November 28 she was 
seen to snap her cable and go staggering drunkenly to 
open sea. The terror of the castaways at this spectacle 



CONTINUATION OF BERING 45 

was unspeakable. Their one chance of escape in 
spring seemed lost; but the beach combers began 
rolling landward through the howling storm; and when 
next the spectators looked, the St. Peter was driving 
ashore like a hurricane ship, and rushed full force, 
nine feet deep with her prow into the sands not a pistol 
shot away from the crew. The next beach comber 
could not budge her. Wind and tide left her high 
and dry, fast in the sand. 

But what had become of ChirikofF, on board the St. 
Paul, from the 20th of June, when the vessels were 
separated by storm .? Would it have been any easier 
for Bering if he had known that the consort ship had 
been zigzagging all the while less than a week's cruise 
from the ^S"^. Peter F When the storm, which had 
separated the vessels, subsided, ChirikofF let the St. 
Paul drift in the hope that Bering might sight the 
missing vessel. Then he steered southeast to lati- 
tude 48° in search of the commander; but on June 23 
a council of officers decided it was a waste of time to 
search longer, and ordered the vessel to be headed 
northeastward. The wind was light; the water, 
clear; and Chirikoff knew, from the pilot-birds follow- 
ing the vessel, from the water-logged trees churning 
past, from the herds of seal floundering in the sea, 
that land must lie in this direction. A bright lookout 
was kept for the first two weeks of July. Two hun- 
dred and forty miles were traversed; and on a calm, 



46 



VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 



clear night between the 13th and 15th of July, there 
loomed above the horizon the dusky heights of a 
wooded mountainous land in latitude 55° 21'. Chiri- 
kofF was in the Alexander Archipelago. Daybreak 
came with the St. Paul only four miles off the con- 
spicuous heights of Cape Addington. Chirikoff had 
discovered land some thirty-six hours before Bering. 
The new world of mountains and forests roused the 
wildest enthusiasm among the Russians. A small 




A Glacier. 



boat was lowered; but it failed to find a landing. A 
light wind sprang up, and the vessel stood out under 
shortened sails for the night. By morning the wind 
had increased, and fog had blurred out all outlines of 
the new-found land. Here the ocean currents ran 
northward; and by morning of the 17th, when the 
sun pierced the washed air and the mountains began 
to appear again through jagged rifts of cloud-wraith, 
Chirikoff found himself at the entrance of a great bay, 
girt by forested mountains to the water's edge, beneath 
the high cone of what is now known as Mount Edge- 



CONTINUATION OF BERING 47 

cumbe, in Sitka Sound. Sitka Sound is an indentation 
about fifteen miles from north to south, with such 
depths of water that there is no anchorage except 
south and southwestward of Mount Edgecumbe. Im- 
penetrable woods lined the mountains to the very 
shore. Great trunks of uprooted trees swept past the 
ship continually. Even as the clouds cleared, leaving 
vast forests and mountain torrents and snowy peaks 
visible, a hazy film of intangible gloom seemed to 
settle over the shadowy harbor.^ 

ChirikofF wished to refill his water-casks. Also, he 
was ambitious to do what the scientists cursed Bering 
for not doing off St. Elias — explore thoroughly the 
land newly found. The long-boat was lowered with 
Abraham Dementieff and ten armed men. The crew 
was supplied with muskets, a brass cannon, and pro- 
visions for several days. Chirikoff arranged a simple 
code of signals with the men — probably a column of 
smoke, or sunlight thrown back by a tin mirror — by 
which he could know if all went well. Then, with a 
cheer, the first Russians to put foot on the soil of 
America bent to the oar and paddled swiftly away 
from the St. Paul for the shadow of the forested moun- 
tains etched from the inland shore. The long-boat 
seemed smaller as the distance from the St. Paul in- 
creased. Then men and boat disappeared behind an 

^ Dr. George Davidson, President of the Geographical Society of the Pacific, has 
written an irrefutable pamphlet on why Kyak Island and Sitka Sound must be accepted 
as the landfalls of Bering and ChirikofF. 



48 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

elbow of land. A flash of reflected light from the 
hidden shore; and Chirikoff knew the little band of 
explorers had safely landed. The rest of the crew 
went to work putting things shipshape on the St. 
Paul. The day passed with more safety signals from 
the shore. The crew of the St. Paul slept sound out 
in mid-harbor unsuspicious of danger. Another day 
passed, and another night. Not so many signals ! 
Had the little band of Russians gone far inland for 
water, and the signals been hidden by the forest gloom ^ 
A wind was singing in the rigging — threatening a 
landward gale that might carry the St. Paul somewhat 
nearer those rocky shores than the Russians could 
wish. Chirikoff^ sent a sailor spying from the look- 
out of the highest yard-arm. No signals at all this 
day; nor the next day; nor the next! The St. Paul 
had only one other small boat. Fearing the jolly- 
boat had come to grief among the rocks and counter- 
currents, Chirikoff bade Sidor Savelief, the bo'swain, 
and six armed sailors, including carpenters to repair 
damages, take the remaining boat and go to De- 
mentieff 's rescue. The strictest orders were given that 
both boats return at once. Barely had the second 
boat rounded the elbow of shore where the first boat 
had disappeared when a great column of smoke burst 
from the tree-tops of the hidden shore. To Chirikoff's 
amazement, the second crew made no signal. The 
night passed uneasily. Sailors were on the watch. 
Ship's rigging was put in shape. Dawn was witnessed 



CONTINUATION OF BERING 49 

by eager eyes gazing shoreward. The reHef was in- 
expressible when two boats — a long and a short one hke 
those used by the two crews — were seen rounding the 
elbow of land. The landward breeze was now strain- 
ing the St. PaiiFs hawsers. Glad to put for open sea 
to weather the coming gale, Chirikoff ordered all 
hands on deck and anchors up. The small boats 
came on with a bounce over the ocean swell; but 
suddenly one of ChirikofF's Russians pointed to the 
approaching crafts. There was a pause in the rattle 
of anchor chains. There was a pause in the bounc- 
ing of the small boats, too. They were not the Rus- 
sian jolly-boats. They were canoes; and the canoes 
were filled with savages as dumb with astonishment at 
the apparition of the St. Paul as the Russians were at 
the canoes. Before the Russians had come to their 
senses, or Chirikoff had time to display presents to 
allure the savages on board as hostages, the Indians 
rose in their places, uttered a war-whoop that set the 
rocks echoing, and beating their paddles on the gun'els, 
scudded for shore. Gradually the meaning dawned 
on Chirikoff. His two crews had been destroyed. 
His small boats were lost. His supply of fresh water 
was running low. The fire that he had observed 
had been a fire of orgies over mutilated men. The 
St. Paul was on a hostile shore with such a gale blow- 
ing as threatened destruction on the rocks. There 
was nothing to do but scud for open sea. When the 
gale abated, Chirikoff returned to Sitka and cruised 



so VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

the shore for some sign of the sailors : but not a trace 
of the lost men could be descried. By this time 
water was so scarce, the men were wringing rain mois- 
ture out of the sails and distilling sea-water. A council 
was called. All agreed it would be worse than folly to 
risk the entire crew for the twelve men, who were prob- 
ably already dead. There was no small boat to land 
for more water; and the St. Paul was headed about 
with all speed for the northwest.^ 

Slant rain settled over the sea. The wind increased 
and grew more violent. The St. Paul drove ahead 
like a ghost form pursued through a realm of mist. 
Toward the end of July, when the weather cleared, 
stupendous mountains covered with snow were seen 
on the northwestward horizon like walls of ice with the 
base awash in thundering sea. Thousands of cata- 
racts, clear as crystal, flashed against the mountain 
sides; and in places the rock wall rose sheer two 
thousand feet from the roaring tide. Inlets, gloomy 
with forested mountain walls where impetuous streams 
laden with the milkv silt of countless glaciers tore 
their way through the rocks to the sea, could be seen 
receding inland through the fog. Then the foul 
weather settled over the sea again; and by the first 

1 Thus the terrible Sitkan massacre of a later day was preceded by the slaughter of 
the first Russians to reach America. The Russian government of a later day originated 
a comical claim to more territory on the ground that descendants of these lost Russians 
had formed settlements farther down the coast, alleging in proof that subsequent explorers 
had found red-headed and light-complexioned people as far south as the Chinook tribes. 
To such means will statecraft stoop. 



CONTINUATION OF BERING 51 

week of August, with baffling winds and choppy 
sea, the St. Paul was veering southwestward where 
Alaska projects a long arm into the Pacific. Chirikoff 
had passed the line where forests dwarf to willows, and 
willows to sedges, and sedges to endless leagues of 
rolling tundras. Somewhere near Kadiak, land was 
again sighted. When the fog lifted, the vapor of far 
volcanoes could be seen hanging lurid over the moun- 
tain tops. 

Wind was followed by dead calm, when the sails 
literally fell to pieces with rain-rot in the fog; and on 
the evening of September 8 the becalmed crew were 
suddenly aroused by the tide-rip of roaring breakers. 
Heaving out all anchors at once, Chirikoff with diffi- 
culty made fast to rocky bottom. In the morning, 
when the fog lifted, he found himself in the centre of 
a shallow bay surrounded by the towering cliffs of 
what is now known as Adakh Island. While waiting 
for a breeze, he saw seven canoe loads of savages put 
out from shore chanting some invocation. The Rus- 
sians threw out presents, but the savages took no 
notice, gradually surrounding the St. Paul. All this 
time Chirikoff had been without any water but the 
stale casks brought from Kamchatka; and he now 
signalled his desperate need to the Indians. They re- 
sponded by bringing bladders full of fresh water; but 
they refused to mount the decks. And by evening 
fourteen canoe loads of the taciturn savages were 
circling threateningly round the Russians. Luckily, 



52 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

at nightfall a wind sprang up. ChirikofF at once 
slipped anchor and put to sea. 

By the third week of August, the rations of rye 
meal had been reduced to once a day instead of twice 
in order to economize water. Only twelve casks of 
water remained; and Chirikoff was fifteen hundred 
miles from Kamchatka. Cold, hunger, thirst, then 
did the rest. Chirikoff himself was stricken with 
scurvy by the middle of September, and one sailor died 
of the scourge. From the 26th, one death a day fol- 
lowed in succession. Though down, Chirikoff was 
not beaten. Discipline was maintained among the 
hungry crew; and each day Chirikoff issued exact 
orders. Without any attempt at steering, the ship 
drifted westward. No more land was seen by the 
crew; but on the 2d of October, the weather clearing, 
an observation was taken of the sun that showed them 
they were nearing Kamchatka. On the 8th, land was 
sighted; but one man alone, the pilot, Yelagin, had 
strength to stay at the helm till Avacha Bay was ap- 
proached, when distress signals were fired from the 
ship's cannon to bring help from land. Poor Croyere 
de risle, kinsman to the map makers whose mistakes 
had caused disaster, sick unto death of the scurvy, 
had kept himself alive with liquor and now insisted on 
being carried ashore. The first breath of clear air 
above decks was enough. The scientist fell dead 
within the home harbor. Chirikoff was landed the 
same day, all unaware that at times in the mist and 




Sea Cowr. 



CONTINUATION OF BERING S3 

rain he had been within from fifteen to forty miles of 
poor Bering, zigzagging across the very trail of the 
afflicted sister ship. 

By December the entire crew of Bering's castaways, 
prisoners on the sea-girt islands of the North Pacific, 
were lodged in five underground huts on the bank of a 
stream. In 1885, when these mud huts or yurts were 
examined, they were seen to have walls of peat three 
feet thick. To each man was given a pound of flour. 
For the rest, their food must be what they caught or 
clubbed — mainly, at first, the sea-otter, whose flesh 
was unpalatable to the taste and tough as leather. 
Later, Steller discovered that the huge sea-cow — 
often thirty-five feet long — seen pasturing on the 
fields of sea-kelp at low tide, afi^orded food of almost 
the same quality as the land cow. Seaweed grew in 
miniature forests on the island ; and on this pastured 
the monster bovine of the sea — true fish in its hind 
quarters but oxlike in its head and its habits — herd- 
ing together like cattle, snorting like a horse, moving 
the neck from side to side as it grazed, with the hind 
leg a fin, the fore fin a leg, udder between the fore legs, 
and in place of teeth, plates. Nine hundred or more 
sea-otter — whose pelts afterward brought a fortune 
to the crew — were killed for food by Steller and his 
companions; but two sea-cows provided the castaways 
with food for six weeks. On November 226. died the 
old mate, who had weathered northern seas for fifty 



54 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

years. In all, out of a crew of seventy-seven, there had 
perished by January 6, 1742, w^hen the last death oc- 
curred, thirty-one men. 

Steller's hut w^as next to Bering's. From that No- 
vember day when he was carried from the ship through 
the snow to the sand pit, the commander sank without 
rallying. Foxskins had been spread on the ground 
as a bed; but the sand loosened from the sides of 
the pit and kept rolling down on the dying man. 
Toward the last he begged Steller to let the sand 
rest, as it kept in the warmth; so that he was soon 
covered with sand to his waist. White billows and a 
gray sky followed the hurricane gale that had hurled 
the ship in on the beach. All night between the even- 
ing of the 7th and the morning of the 8th of December, 
the moaning of the south wind could be heard through 
the tattered rigging of the wrecked ship ; and all 
night the dying Dane was communing with his God. 
He was now over sixty years of age. To a constitution 
already broken by the nagging cares of eight years 
and by hardships indescribable, by scurvy and by ex- 
posure, was added an acute inflammation. Bering's 
power of resistance was sapped. Two hours before 
daybreak on December 8, 1741, the brave Dane 
breathed his last. He was interred on the 9th of 
December between the graves of the mate and the 
steward on the hillside; and the bearded Russians 
came dow^n from the new-made grave that day bowed 
and hopeless. A plain Greek cross was placed above 



CONTINUATION OF BERING SS 

his grave; and a copy of that cross marks the same 
grave to-day. 

The question arises — where does Bering stand 
among the world heroes ? The world loves success 
better than defeat; and spectacular success better than 
duty plainly done. If success means accomplishing 
what one sets out to do in spite of almost insuperable 
difficulties — Bering won success. He set out to dis- 
cover the northwest coast of America; and he perished 
doing it. But if heroism means a something more 
than tangible success ; if it means that divine quality 
of fighting for the truth independent of reward, whether 
one is to be beaten or not ; if it means setting to one's 
self the task of perishing for a truth, without the slight- 
est hope of establishing that truth — then, Bering 
stands very high indeed among the world's heroes. 
Steller, who had cursed him for not remaining longer 
at Mount St. Elias, bore the highest testimony to his 
integrity and worth. It may be said that a stronger 
type of hero would have scrunched into nothingness 
the vampire blunderers who misled the ship; but it 
must be remembered that stronger types of heroes 
usually save their own skins and let the underlings 
suffer. While Bering might have averted the disaster 
that attended the expedition, it must not be forgotten 
that when he perished, there perished the very soul of 
the great enterprise, which at once crumbled to pieces. 

On a purely material plane, what did Bering ac- 
complish ? 



^6 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

He dispelled forever the myth of the Northeast 
Passage if the world would have but accepted his con- 
clusions. The coast of Japan was charted under his 
direction. The Arctic coast of Asia was charted under 
his direction. A country as large as from Maine to 
Florida, or Baltimore to Texas, with a river compar- 
able only to the Mississippi, was discovered by him. 
The furs of this country for a single year more than 
paid all that Russia spent to discover it; all that the 
United States later paid to Russia for it. 

A dead whale thrown up on the shore proved a 
godsend to the weak and famishing castaways. As 
their bodies grew stronger, the spirit of merriment that 
gilds life's darkest clouds began to come back, and 
the whale was jocularly known among the Russians as 
"our magazine of provisions." 

Then parties of hunters began going out for the sea- 
otter, which hid its head during storm under the kelp 
of the sea fields. Steller knew the Chinese would pay 
what in modern money is from one hundred to one 
hundred and fifty dollars for each of these sea-otter 
skins; and between nine hundred and one thousand 
were taken by the wrecked crew. The same skin ot 
prime quality sells in a London auction room to-day 
for one thousand dollars. And in spring, when the 
sea-otter disappeared, there came herds — herds in 
millions upon millions — of another visitant to the 
shores of the Commander Islands — the fur seal. 



CONTINUATION OF BERING 



57 



which afforded new hunting to the crew, and new 
wealth to the world. 

The terrible danger now was not from starvation, 
but mutiny, murder, or massacre among the branded 
criminals of the discontented crew. Waxel, as he re- 




Seals in a Rookery on Bering Island. 



covered, was afraid of tempting revolt with orders, and 
convened the crew by vote to determine all that should 
be done. Officers and men — there was no distinc- 
iton. By March of 1742 the ground had cleared of 
snow. Waxel called a meeting to suggest breaking 
up the packet vessel to build a smaller craft. A vote 



58 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

was asked. The resolution was called, written out, 
and signed by every survivor, but afterward, when 
officers and men set themselves to the well-nigh im- 
possible task of untackling the ship without implements 
of iron, revolt appeared among the workers. Again 
Waxel avoided mutiny. A meeting was called, another 
vote taken, the recalcitrants shamed down. The crew 
lacked more than tools. There was no ship's carpen- 
ter. Finally a Cossack, who was afterward raised 
to the nobility for his work, consented to act as director 
of the building, and on the 6th of May a vessel forty 
feet long, thirteen beam, and six deep, was on the stocks. 
All June, the noise of the planking went on till the 
mast raised its yard-arms, and an eight-oared single- 
master, such as the old Vikings of the North Sea used, 
was well under way. 

The difficulties of such shipbuilding can hardly be 
realized. There was no wood but the wood of the old 
ship, no rigging but the old hemp, no tar but such as 
could be melted out of the old hemp in earth pits ; and 
very few axes. The upper part was calked with 
tallow of the sea-cow, the under with tar from the old 
hull. The men also constructed a second small boat 
or canoe. 

On the loth of August, with such cheers as the 
island never heard before or since, the single-master 
was launched from the skids and named the St. 
Peter. Cannon balls and cartridges were thrown in 
bottom as ballast. Luckily, eight hundred pounds of 



CONTINUATION OF BERING 59 

meal had been reserved for the return voyage, and 
Steller had salted down steaks of whale meat and sea- 
cow. On the evening of August 16, after solemn 
prayer and devotions, with one last look to the lonely 
crosses on the hillside where lay the dead, the castaways 
went on board. A sharp breeze was blowing from the 
north. Hoisting sail, they glided out to sea. The 
old jolly-boat hobbled behind in tow. Late at night, 
when the wind fell, the eager mariners bent to the oar. 
By noon next day they had rounded the southeast 
corner of the island. Two days afterward, rough 
weather set the old jolly-boat bumping her nose so 
violently on the heels of the St. Peter, that the cable 
had to be cut and the small boat set adrift. That 
night the poor tallow-calked planks leaked so badly, 
pumps and buckets were worked at fever heat, and all 
the ballast was thrown overboard. Sometime during 
the 25th, there shone above the silver rim where 
sea and sky met, the opal dome of far mountains, 
Kamchatka ! 

The bearded men could control themselves no 
longer. Shout on shout made the welkin ring. Tears 
streamed down the rough, unwashed faces. The Cos- 
sacks wept like children. Men vied with each other 
to seize the oars and row like mad. The tide-rip 
bounding — lifting — falling — racing over seas for the 
shores of Kamchatka never ran so mad and swift a 
course as the crazy craft there bouncing forward 
over the waves. And when they saw the home harbor 



6o VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

of Petropaulovsk, Avacha Bay, on August 27, exul- 
tation knew no bounds. The men fired off guns, 
beat oars on the deck rail, shouted — shouted — 
shouted till the mountains echoed and every living soul 
of Avacha dashed to the waterside scarcely believing 
the evidence of his eyes — that the castaways of 
Bering's ship had returned. Then one may well 
believe that the monks set the chapel bells ringing and 
the cannon roared a welcome from Avacha Bay. 

Chirikoff had in May sailed in search of Bering, 
passing close to the island where the castaways were 
prisoners of the sea, but he did not see the Commander 
Islands; and all hope had been given up for any word 
of the St. Peter. Waxel wintered that year at Avacha 
Bay, crossing the mainland in the spring of 1743. In 
September of the same year, an imperial decree put an 
end to the Northern Expedition, and Waxel set out 
across Siberia to take the crew back to St. Petersburg. 
Poor Steller died on the way from exposure. 

So ended the greatest naval exploration known to 
the world. Beside it, other expeditions to explore 
America pale to insignificance. La Salle and La Ver- 
endrye ascended the St. Lawrence, crossed inland 
plains, rafted down the mighty tide of the great inland 
rivers; but La Salle stopped at the mouth of the Mis- 
sissippi, and La Verendrye was checked by the barrier 
of the Rockies. Lewis and Clark accomplished yet 
more. After ascending the Missouri and crossing the 
plains, they traversed the Rockies; but they were 



CONTINUATION OF BERING 6i 

stopped at the Pacific. When Bering had crossed 
the rivers and mountains of the two continents — first 
Europe, then Asia — and reached the Pacific, his ex- 
pedition had only begun. Little remains to Russia 
of what he accompHshed but the group of rocky islets 
where he perished. But judged by the difficulties 
which he overcame; by the duties desperately impos- 
sible, done plainly and doggedly, by death heroic in 
defeat — Bering's expedition to northwestern America 
is without a peer in the annals of the New World 
discovery.^ 

^ Coxe's Disco'veries of the Russians betiveen yisia and America (Paris, 1 781) sup- 
plies local data on Siberia in the time of Bering. Voyages from Asia to America, by 
S. Miiller of the Royal Academy, St. Petersburg, 1 764, is simply excellent in that part 
of the voyage dealing with the wreck. Peter LauriJsen's Vitus Bering translated from 
the Danish by Olson covers all three aims of the expedition, Japanese and Arctic voyages 
as well as American. 



CHAPTER III 

1741-1760 

THE SEA-OTTER HUNTERS 

How the Sea-otter Pelts brought back by Bering's Crew led to the 
Exploitation of the Northwest Coast of America — Difference of 
Sea-otter from Other Fur-bearing Animals of the West — Perils 
of the Hunt 

When the castaway crew of Vitus Bering looked 
about for means to exist on the barren islands where 
they were wrecked, they found the kelp beds and sea- 
weed fields of the North Pacific literally alive with a 
little animal, which the Russians called "the sea- 
beaver." Sailors of Kamchatka and eastern Siberia 
knew the sea-beaver well, for it had been found on 
the Asiatic side of the Pacific, and its pelt was regarded 
as priceless by Chinese and Tartar merchants. But 
where did this strange denizen of northern waters live ^ 
Only in rare seasons did the herds assemble on the 
rocky islets of Kamchatka and Japan. And when 
spring came, the sea-beaver disappeared. Asia was 
not its home. Where did it go .? 

Russian adventurers who rafted the coast of Siberia 

62 



THE SEA-OTTER HUNTERS 63 

in crazy skiffs, related that the sea-beaver always 
disappeared northeastward, whence the spruce drift- 
wood and dead whales with harpoons of strange hunt- 
ers and occasionally wrecks of walrus-skin boats came 
washing from an unknown land. 

It was only when Bering's crew were left prisoners 
of the sea on an island barren as a billiard ball that 
the hunger-desperate men found the habitat of the 
sea-beaver to be the kelp beds of the Aleutian Isl- 
ands and northwestern America. But what use were 
priceless pelts where neither money nor merchant was, 
and men mad with hunger were thrown back on the 
primal necessities without thought of gain ^ 

The hungry Russian sailors fell on the kelp beds, 
clubbing right and left regardless of pelts. What 
matter if the flesh was tough as leather and rank as 
musk ^ It filled the empty stomachs of fifty desperate 
men; and the skins were used on the treeless isle as 
rugs, as coats, as walls, as stuff to chink the cracks of 
earth pits, where the sailors huddled like animals in 
underground caves with no ceiling but the tattered 
sails. So passed a year — the most desolate year in 
the annals of ocean voyaging, and when the castaways 
rafted back to Asia on a skiff made of their wrecked 
ship, they were clad in the raw skins of the sea-otter, 
which they had eaten. In all, nearly a thousand skins 
were carried back; and for those skins, which the 
Russian sailors had scarcely valued, Chinese mer- 
chants paid what in modern money would be from 



64 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

one hundred and fifty to two hundred dollars a 
pelt.^ 

After that, the Russians of Siberia needed no incen- 
tive to hunt the sea-beaver. Its habitat was known, 
and all the riffraff adventurers of Siberian exile, Tar- 
tars, Kamchatkans, Russians, criminals, and officers 
of royal lineage, engaged in the fur trade of western 
America. Danger made no difference. All that was 
needed was a boat; and the boat was usually rough- 
hewn out of the green timbers of Kamchatka. If iron 
bolts were lacking so far from Europe as the width of 
two continents, the boat builders used deer sinew, or 
thongs of walrus hide. Tallow took the place of tar, 
deerskin the place of hemp, and courage the place 
of caution. A Siberian merchant then chanced an 
outfit of supplies for half what the returns might be. 
The commander — officer or exile — then enlisted 
sailors among landsmen. Landsmen were preferable 
for this kind of voyaging. Either in the sublime cour- 
age of ignorance, or with the audacity of desperation, 
the poor landsmen dared dangers which no sailors 
would risk on such crazy craft, two thousand miles 
from a home port on an outrageous sea. 

England and the United States became involved in 
the exploitation of the Pacific coast in almost the same 
way. When Captain Cook was at Nootka Sound 
thirty years after Bering's death, his crews traded 

1 The price of the sea-otter varied, falling in seasons when the market was glutted 
to ^40 a pelt, selling as high, in cases of rare beauty, as $ 1000 a pelt. 



THE SEA-OTTER HUNTERS 6s 

trinkets over the tafFrail netting for any kind of furs 
the natives of the west coast chose to exchange. In 
the long voyaging to Arctic waters afterward, these 
furs went to waste with rain-rot. More than two- 
thirds were thrown or given away. The remaining 
third sold in China on the home voyage of the ships 
for what would be more than ten thousand dollars of 
modern money. News of that fact was enough. 
Boston, New York, London, rubbed their eyes to pos- 
sibilities of fur trade on the Pacific coast. As the 
world knows, Boston's efforts resulted in the chance 
discovery of the Columbia ; New York's efforts, in the 
foundation of the Astor fortunes. East India, France, 
England, Spain, the United States, vied with each 
other for the prize of America's west coast. 

Just as the beaver led French voyagers westward 
from Quebec to the Rocky Mountains, south to Texas, 
north to the Athabasca, so the hunt of the sea-beaver 
led to the exploration of the North Pacific coast. 

"Sea-beaver" the Russians called the owner of the 
rare pelt. "Sea-otter" it was known to the English 
and American hunters. But it is like neither the otter 
nor beaver, though its habits are akin to both. Its 
nearest relative is probably the fur seal. Like the seal, 
its pelt has an ebony shimmer, showing silver when 
blown open, soft black tipped with white, when ex- 
amined hair by hair. Six feet, the full-grown sea-otter 
measures from nose to stumpy tail, with a beaver- 

F 



66 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

shaped face, teeth Hke a cat, and short webbed feet. 
Some hunters say the sea-otter is hterally born on the 
tumbhng waves — a single pup at a time; others, 
that the sea-otter retire to some soHtary rocky islet to 
bring forth their young. Certain it is they are 
rocked on the deep from their birth, "cradled" in the 
sea, sleeping on their backs in the water, clasping the 
young in their arms like a human being, tossing up 
seaweed in play by the hour like mischievous monkeys, 
or crawling out on some safe, sea-girt rocklet, where 
they shake the water from their fur and make their 
toilet, stretching and arranging and rearranging hair 
like a cat. Only the fiercest gales drive the sea-otter 
ashore, for it must come above water to breathe; and 
it must come ashore to sleep where it can breathe; 
for the ocean wash in a storm would smother the 
sleeper. And its favorite sleeping grounds are in the 
forests of kelp and seaweed, where it can bury its 
head, and like the ostrich think itself hidden. A 
sound, a whiff — the faintest tinge — of smoke from 
miles away is enough to frighten the sleeper, who leaps 
up with a fierce courage unequalled in the animal 
world, and makes for sea in lightning-flash bounds. 

When Bering found the northwest coast of America, 
the sea-otter frequented all the way from what is now 
California to the Commander Islands, the last link of 
the chain from America to Asia. Sea-otter were found 
and taken in thousands at Sitka Sound, in Yakutat 
Bay, Prince William Sound, Cook's Inlet, and all 



THE SEA-OTTER HUNTERS 67 

along the chain of eleven hundred Aleutian Islands to 
the Commander Group, off Kamchatka. Where they 
were found in thousands then, they are seen only in 
tens and hundreds to-day. Where they are in hun- 
dreds one year, they may not come at all the next, 
having been too hard hunted. This explains why 
there used to be returns of five thousand in a single 
year at Kadiak or Oonalaska or Cook's Inlet; and 
the next year, less than a hundred from the same 
places. Japan long ago moved for laws to protect 
the sea-otter as vigorously as the seal; but Japan was 
only snubbed by England and the United States for 
her pains, and to-day the only adequate protection 
afforded the diminishing sea-otter is in the tiny remnant 
of Russia's once vast American possessions — on the 
Commander Islands where by law only two hundred 
sea-otter may be taken a year, and the sea-otter rook- 
eries are more jealously guarded than diamond mines. 
The decreasing hunt has brought back primitive 
methods. Instead of firearms, the primitive club and 
net and spear are again used, giving the sea-otter a 
fair chance against his antagonist — Man. Except 
that the hunters are few and now dress in San Fran- 
cisco clothes, they go to the hunt in the same old way 
as when Baranof, head of the Russian Fur Company, 
led his battalions out in companies of a thousand and 
two thousand "bidarkies" — walrus-skin skiffs taut 
as a drumhead, with seams tallowed and an oilskin 
wound round each of the manholes, so that the boat 



68 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

could turn a somerset in the water, or be pitched off a 
rock into the surf, and come right side up without 
taking water, paddler erect. 

The first thing the hunter had to look to was boat 
and hunting gear. Westward of Cook's Inlet and 
Kadiak was no timber but driftwood, and the tide 
wash of wrecks; so the hunter, who set out on the 
trail of the pathless sea, framed his boat on the bones 
of the whale. There were two kinds of boats — - the 
long ones, for from twelve to twenty men, the little 
skiffs which Eskimos of the Atlantic call kyacks — 
with two or three, seldom more, manholes. Over 
the whalebone frame was stretched the wet elastic 
hide of walrus or sea-lion. The big boat was open on 
top like a Newfoundland fisherman's dory or French- 
man's bateau, the little boat covered over the top 
except for the manholes round which were wound oil- 
skins to keep the water out when the paddler had 
seated himself inside. Then the wet skin was allowed 
to dry in sunshine and wind. Hot seal oil and tallow 
poured over the seams and cracks, calked the leaks. 
More sunshine and wind, double-bladed paddles for 
the little boats, strong oars and a sail for the big ones, 
and the skiffs were ready for water. Eastward of 
Kadiak, particularly south of Sitka, the boats might 
be hollowed trees, carved wooden canoes, or dugouts — 
not half so light to ride shallow, tempestuous seas as 
the skin skiff of the Aleut hunter. 

We supercilious civilized folk laugh at the odd dress 



THE SEA-OTTER HUNTERS 6<) 

of the savage; but it was exactly adapted to the need. 
The otter hunter wore the fur in, because that was 
warmer; and the skin out, because cured in oil, that 
was waterproof; and the chimney-pot capote, because 
that tied tight enough around his neck kept the ice- 
water from going down his back when the bidarka 
turned heels up ; and the skin boots, because they, too, 
were waterproof; and the sedge grass padding in 
place of stockings, because it protected the feet from 
the jar of rocks in wild runs through surf and kelp 
after the game. On land, the skin side of the coats 
could be turned in and the fur out, 

Oonalaska, westward of the Aleutian chain of islands 
and Kadiak, just south of the great Alaskan peninsula, 
were the two main points whence radiated the hunting 
flotillas for the sea-otter grounds. Formerly, a single 
Russian schooner or packet boat would lead the way 
with a procession of a thousand bidarkas. Later, 
schooners, thirty or forty of them, gathered the hunters 
at some main fur post, stowed the light skin kyacks in 
piles on the decks, and carried the Aleuts to the otter 
grounds. This might be at Atka, where the finest 
otter hunters in the world lived, or on the south shore 
of Oonalaska, or in Cook's Inlet where the rip of the 
tide runs a mill-race, or just off Kadiak on the Saanach 
coast, where twenty miles of beach boulders and surf 
waters and little islets 'of sea-kelp provide ideal fields 
for the sea-otter. Here the sweeping tides and boom- 



70 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

ing back-wash keep up such a roar of tumbUng seas, 
the shy, wary otter, alert as an eagle, do not easily get 
scent or sound of human intruder. Surf washes out 
the scent of the man track. Surf out-sounds noise of 
the man killer; and no fires are lighted, be it winter 
or summer, unless the wind is straight from the south- 
ward; for the sea-otter always frequent the south 
shores. The only provisions on the carrying schooner 
are hams, rancid butter or grease, some rye bread 
and flour; the only clothing, what the Aleut hunters 
wear. 

No sooner has the schooner sheered off the hunting- 
grounds, than the Aleuts are over decks with the agility 
of performing monkeys, the schooner captain wishing 
each good luck, the eager hunters leaping into their 
bidarkas following the lead of a chief. The schooner 
then returns to the home harbor, leaving the hunters 
on islands bare as a planed board for two, three, four 
months. On the Commander Group, otter hunters 
are now restricted to the use of the net alone, but 
formerly the nature of the hunting was determined 
entirely by the weather. If a tide ran with heavy surf 
and wind landward to conceal sound and sight, the 
hunters lined alongshore of the kelp beds and engaged 
in the hunt known as surf-shooting. Their rifles would 
carry a thousand yards. Whoever saw the little round 
black head bob above the surface of the water, shot, 
and the surf wash carried in the dead body. If the 
weather was dead calm, fog or clear, bands of twenty 



THE SEA-OTTER HUNTERS 71 

and thirty men deployed in a circle to spear their 
quarry. This was the spearing-surround. Or if such 
a hurricane gale was churning the sea so that gusty 
spray and sleet storm washed out every outline, sweep- 
ing the kelp beds naked one minute, inundating them 
with mountainous rollers that thundered up the rocks 
the next, the Aleut hunters risked life, scudded out on 
the back of the raging storm, now riding the rollers, 
now dipping to the trough of the sea, now scooting 
with hghtning paddle-strokes right through the blasts 
of spray athwart wave wash and trough — straight for 
the kelp beds or rocky boulders, where the sea-otter 
must have been driven for refuge by the storm. This 
hunting is the very incarnation of the storm spirit 
itself, for the wilder the gale, the more sea-otter have 
come ashore; the less likely they will be to see or 
hear or smell the hunter. Gaff or paddle in hand, the 
Aleut leaps from rock to rock, or dashes among 
the tumbling beds of tossed kelp. A quick blow of 
the bludgeon; the otter never knows how death came. 
This is the club hunt. But where the shore is honey- 
combed with caves and narrow inlets of kelp fields, 
is a safer kind of hunting. Huge nets now made of 
twine, formerly of sinew, with wooden floaters above, 
iron sinkers below, are spread athwart the kelp fields. 
The tide sweeps in, washing the net flat. And the sea- 
otter swim in with the tide. The tide sweeps out, 
washing the net up, but the otter are enmeshed in a 
tangle that holds neck and feet. This is, perhaps, the 



72 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

best kind of otter hunting, for the females and young 
can be thrown back in the sea. 

Barely has the supply schooner dipped over the 
offing, when the cockle-shell bidarkas skimming over 
the sea make for the shore of the hunting-grounds. 
Camping is a simple matter, for no fires are to be lighted, 
and the tenting place is chosen if possible on the north 
side of some knoll. If it is warm weather, the Aleut 
will turn his skin skiff upside down, crawl into the 
hole head first and sleep there. Or he may erect the 
V-shaped tent such as the prairie tepee. But if it is 
cold, he has a better plan yet. He will dig a hole in the 
ground and cover over the top with sail-cloth. Let the 
wind roar above and the ice bang the shore rocks, 
the Aleut swathed in furs sleeps sound close to earth. 
If driftwood lines the shore, he is in luck; for he props 
up the poles, covers them with furs, and has what might 
be mistaken for a wigwam, except that these Indians 
construct their tents round-topped and always turn 
the skin side of the fur out. 

For provisions, he has brought very little from the 
ship. He will depend on the winds driving in a dead 
whale, or on the fish of the shore, or on the eggs of the 
sea-birds that nest on these rocks millions upon millions 
— such myriads of birds they seem to crowd each other 
for foot room, and the noise of their wings is like a great 
wind.^ The Aleut himself is what any race of men 

^ See John Burroughs's account of birds observed durinj tho Harriman Expedition. 
Elliott and Stejenger have remarked on the same phenomenon. 



THE SEA-OTTER HUNTERS 73 

would become in generations of such a life. His skin 
is more like bronze than leather. His chest is like a 
bellows, but his legs are ill developed from the cramped 
posture of knees in the manhole. Indeed, more than 
knees go under the manhole. When pressed for room, 
the Aleut has been known to crawl head foremost, 
body whole, right under the manhole and lie there prone 
between the feet of the paddlers with nothing between 
him and the abysmal depths of a hissing sea but the 
parchment keel of the bidarka, thin as paper. 

How do these thin skin boats escape wreckage on a 
sea where tide-rip washes over the reefs all summer 
and ice hummocks sweep out from the shore in winter 
tempest ? To begin with, the frost that creates the ice 
clears the air of fog, and the steel-shod pole either 
sheers the bidarka off from the ice, or the ice off from 
the bidarka. Then, when the fog lies knife-thick over 
the dangerous rocks in summer time, there is a certain 
signal to these deep-sea plunderers. The huge Pacific 
walrus — the largest species of walrus in the world — 
lie in herds of hundreds on these danger rocks, and the 
walrus snorts through the gray mist like a continual 
fog-horn. No better danger signal exists among the 
rocks of the North Pacific than this same snorting 
walrus, who for all his noise and size is a floundering 
coward. The great danger to the nutshell skiffs is 
from becoming ice-logged when the sleet storms fall 
and freeze; and for the rest, the sea makes small matter 
of a hunter more or less. 



74 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

No landsman's still-hunt affords the thrilling excite- 
ment of the otter hunter's spearing-surrounds. Fif- 
teen or twenty-five little skin skiffs, with two or three 
men in each, paddle out under a chief elected by com- 
mon consent. Whether fog or clear, the spearing is 
done only in calm weather. The long line of bidarkas 
circles silently over the silver sea. Not a word is spoken, 
not a paddle blade allowed to click against the bone 
gun'els of the skiff. Double-bladed paddles are fre- 
quently used, so shift of paddle is made from side to 
side of the canoe without a change of hands. The 
skin shallops take to the water as noiselessly as the 
glide of a duck. Yonder, where the boulders lie mile 
on mile awash in the surf, kelp rafts — forests of sea- 
weed — lift and fall with the rhythmical wash of the 
tide. Hither the otter hunters steer, silent as shadows. 
The circle widens, deploys, forms a cordon round the 
outermost rim of the kelp fields. Suddenly a black 
object is seen floating on the surface of the waters — 
a sea-otter asleep. Quick as flash, the steersman lifts 
his paddle. Not a word is spoken, but so keen is the 
hearing of the sleeping otter, the drip of the lifted 
paddle has not splashed into the sea before the otter 
has awakened, looked and dived like lightning to the 
bottom of the sea before one of the Aleut hunters can 
hurl his spear. Silently, not a whisper, the steers- 
man signals again. The hunters deploy in a circle 
half a mile broad round the place where the sea-otter 
disappeared; for they know that in fifteen or twenty 



THE SEA-OTTER HUNTERS 75 

minutes the animal must come up for breath, and it 
cannot run farther than half a mile under sea before 
it reappears. 

Suddenly somebody sees a round black-red head 
poke above water, perhaps close to the line of watchers. 
With a wild shout, the nearest bidarkas dart forward. 
Whether the spear-throw has hit or missed, the shout 
has done enough. The terrified otter dives before it 
has breath. Over the second diving spot a hunter is 
stationed, and the circle narrows, for the otter must 
come up quicker this time. It must have breath. 
Again and again, the little round head peeps up. 
Again the shout greets it. Again the lightning dive. 
Sometimes only a bubble gurgling to the top of the 
water guides the watchers. Presently the body is so 
full of gases from suppressed breathing, it can no 
longer sink, and a quick spear-throw secures the quarry. 
One animal against, perhaps, sixty men. Is the quest 
fair ? Yonder thunders the surf below beetling preci- 
pices. Then the tide wash comes in with a rip like a 
whirlpool, or the ebb sets the beach combers rolling — 
lashing billows of tumbling waters that crash together 
and set the sheets of blinding spray shattering. Or 
the fog comes down over a choppy sea with a whizzing 
wind that sets the whitecaps flying backward like a 
horse's mane. The chase may have led farther and 
farther from land. As long as the little black head 
comes up, as long as the gurgling bubble tells of a 
struggling breather below, the hunters follow, be it 



76 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

near or far, till, at the end of two or three hours, the 
exhausted sea-otter is taken. Perhaps forty men have 
risked their lives for a single pelt for w^hich the trader 
cannot pay more than forty dollars; for he must have 
his profit, and the skin must be dressed, and the middle- 
men must have their profit; so that if it sells even for 
eleven hundred dollars in London — though the aver- 
age is nearer one hundred and fifty dollars — the Aleut 
is lucky to receive forty or fifty dollars. Day after day, 
three months at a time, warm or cold, not daring to 
light fires on the island, the Aleut hunters go out to the 
spearing-surround, till the schooner returns for them 
from the main post; and whether the hunt is harder 
on man or beast may be judged from the fact that where 
the hunting battalions used to rally out in companies 
of thousands, they to-day go forth only in twenties 
and forties. True, the sea-otter has decreased and is 
almost extinct in places; but then, where game laws 
protect it, as in the Commander Islands, it is on the 
increase, and as for the Aleut hunters — their thou- 
sands lie in the bottom of the sea; and of the thousands 
who rallied forth long ago, often only a few hundred 
returned. 

But while the spearing-surround was chiefly followed 
in battalions under the direction of a trading company, 
the clubbing was done by the individuals — the daunt- 
less hunters, who scudded out in twos and threes in the 
wake of the blast, lost themselves in the shattering sheets 
of spray, with the wind screaming mad riot in their ears 



THE SEA-OTTER HUNTERS 77 

and the roily rollers running a mill-race against tide and 
wind. How did they steer their cockle-shell skiffs — 
these Vikings of the North Pacific; or did they steer at 
all, or only fly before the gale on the wings of the mad 
north winds ? Who can tell ? The feet of man leave 
earth sometimes when the spirit rides out reckless of 
land or sea, or heaven or hell, and these plunderers 
of the deep took no reckoning of life or death when they 
rode out on the gale, where the beach combers shat- 
tered up the rocks, and the creatures of the sea came 
huddling landward to take refuge among the kelp rafts. 

Tossing the skin skiffs high and dry on some rock, 
with perhaps the weight of a boulder to keep them from 
blowing away, the hunters rushed off to the surf wash 
armed only with a stout stick. 

The otters must be approached away from the wind, 
and the noise of the surf will deaden the hunter's ap- 
proach; so beating their way against hurricane gales 
— winds that throw them from their feet at times — 
scrambling over rocks slippery as glass with ice, run- 
ning out on long reefs where the crash of spray con- 
fuses earth and air, wading waist-deep in ice slush, 
the hunters dash out for the kelp beds and rocks where 
the otter are asleep. Clubbing sounds brutal, but this 
kind of hunting is, perhaps, the most merciful of all — 
to the animal, not the man. The otter is asleep. The 
gale conceals the approaching danger. One blow of 
the gaff, and the otter never awakes. In this way 
have three hunters killed as many as a hundred otter 



78 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

in two hours; and in this way have the thousands of 
Aleutian otter hunters, who used to throng the inlets of 
the northern islands, perished and dwindled to a popu- 
lation of poverty stricken, scattered men. 

What were the rewards for all this risk of life ? A 
glance at the records of the old fur companies tells 
why the Russian and American and English traders 
preferred sea-otter to the gold mines of the Spaniards 
in Mexico. Less than ten years after Cook's crew 
had sold their sea-otter for ten thousand dollars, the 
East India Company sold six hundred sea-otter for 
from sixty to one hundred dollars each. Two years 
later, Portlock and Dixon sold their cargo for fifty- 
five thousand dollars; and when it is remembered 
that two hundred sea-otter — twelve thousand dollars' 
worth at the lowest average — were sometimes got 
from the Nootka tribes for a few dollars' worth of old 
chisel iron — the profit can be estimated. 

In 1785 five thousand sea-otter w^ere sold in China 
for one hundred and sixty thousand dollars. A capital 
of fifty thousand usually yielded three hundred thou- 
sand dollars; that is — if the ships escaped the dangers 
of hostile Indians and treacherous seas. What the 
Russians made from sea-otter will probably never be 
known; for so many different companies were engaged 
in the trade; and a hundred years ago, as many as 
fifteen thousand Indian hunters went out for the Rus- 
sians yearly. One ship, the year after Bering's wreck, 



THE SEA-OTTER HUNTERS 79 

is known to have made half a milHon dollars from its 
cargo. By definite figures — not Including returns not 
tabulated in the fur companies — two hundred thousand 
sea-otter were taken for the Russians in half a century. 
Just before the United States took over Alaska, Russia 
was content with four hundred sea-otter a year; but 
by 1875 the Americans were getting three thousand a 
year. Those gathered at Kadiak have totalled as 
many as six thousand in a year during the heyday of 
the hunt, at Oonalaska three thousand, on the Prybi- 
lofs now noted for their seal, five thousand. In 1785 
Cook's Inlet yielded three thousand; in 1812, only one 
hundred. Yakutat gave two thousand in 1794, only 
three hundred, six years later. Fifteen thousand were 
gathered at Sitka in 1804, only one hundred and fifty 
thirty years later. Of course the Russians obtained 
such results only by a system of musket, bludgeon, and 
outrage, that are repellent to the modern mind. Women 
were seized as hostages for a big hunt. Women were 
even murdered as a punishment for small returns. 
Men were sacrificed like dogs by the "promyshleniki" 
— riffraff blackguard Russian hunters from the Sibe- 
rian exile population; but this is a story of outrageous 
wrong followed by its own terrible and unshunnable 
Nemesis which shall be told by itself. 



CHAPTER IV ^: 

1760-1770 

THE OUTLAW HUNTERS 

The American Coast becomes the Great Rendezvous for Siberian 
Criminals and PoHtical Exiles — Beyond Reach of Law, Cossacks 
and Criminals perpetrate Outrages on the Indians — The Indians' 
Revenge wipes out Russian Forts in America — The Pursuit of 
Four Refugee Russians from Cave to Cave over the Sea at Night 
— How they escape after a Year's Chase 

"God was high in the Heavens, and the Czar was far 
away/' as the Russians say, and the Siberian exiles — 
coureurs of the sea — who flocked to the west coast 
of America to hunt the sea-otter after Bering's dis- 
coveries in 1 741 took small thought and recked no con- 
sequences of God or the Czar. 

They timbered their crazy craft from green wood in 
Kamchatka, or on the Okhotsk Sea, or among the for- 
ests of Siberian rivers. They lashed the rude planks 
together, hoisted a sail of deer hide above a deck of, 
perhaps, sixty feet, and steering by instinct across seas 
as chartless as the forests where French coureurs 
ran, struck out from Asia for America with wilder 

80 



THE OUTLAW HUNTERS 8i 

dreams of plunder than ever Spanish galleon or English 
freebooter hoped coasting the high seas. 

The crews were criminals with the brands of their 
crimes worn uncovered, banded together by some 
Siberian merchant who had provided goods for trade, 
and set adrift under charge of half a dozen Cossacks 
supposed to keep order and collect tribute of one-tenth 
as homage from American Indians for the Czar. Eng- 
lish buccaneers didn't scruple as to blood when they 
sacked Spanish cities for Spanish gold. These Rus- 
sian outlaws scrupled less, when their only hope of 
bettering a desperate exile was the booty of precious 
furs plundered, or bludgeoned, or exacted as tribute 
from the Indians of Northwest America. The plunder, 
when successful, or trade, if the crazy planks did not go 
to pieces above some of the reefs that cut up the North 
Pacific, was halved between outfitter and crew. If 
the cargo amounted to half a million dollars in modern 
money — as one of Drusenin's first trips did — then 
a quarter of a million was a tidy sum to be divided 
among a crew of, say, thirty or forty. Often as not, 
the long-planked single-master fell to pieces in a gale, 
when the Russians went to the bottom of the sea, or 
stranded among the Aleutian Islands westward of 
Alaska, when the castaways took up comfortable 
quarters among the Indians, who knew no other code 
of existence than the rights of the strong; and the Rus- 
sians with their firearms seemed strong, indeed, to the 
Aleuts. As long as the newcomer demanded only furs, 



82 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

on his own terms of trade — the Indians acquiesced. 
Their one hope was to become strong as the Russians 
by getting iron in "toes" — bands two inches thick, 
two feet long. It was that ideal state, which finical 
philosophers describe as the "survival of the fit," and it 
worked well till the other party to the arrangement 
resolved he would play the same game and become fit, 
too, when there resulted a cataclysm of bloodshed. 
The Indians bowed the neck submissively before op- 
pression. Abuse, cruelty, outrage, accumulated on 
the heads of the poor Aleuts. They had reached the 
fine point where it is better for the weak to die trying 
to overthrow strength, than to live under the iron heel 
of brute oppression. 

The immediate cause of revolt is a type of all that 
preceded it.^ Running out for a thousand miles from 
the coast of Alaska is the long chain of Aleutian Isl- 
ands linking across the Pacific toward Asia. Oona- 
laska, the most important and middle of these, is as 
far from Oregon as Oregon is from New York. Near 
Oonalaska were the finest sea-otter fields in the world; 
and the Aleutians numbered twenty thousand hunters 
— men, women, children — born to the light skin 
boat as plainsmen were born to the saddle. On Oona- 
laska and its next-door neighbor westward were at 
least ten thousand of these Indian otter hunters, w^hen 
Russia first sent her ships to America. Bassof came 
soonest after Bering's discovery; and he carried back 

1 See Coxe's Discoveries of the Russians. 



THE OUTLAW HUNTERS 83 

on each of three trips to the Commander Islands a 
cargo of furs worth from seventy-five thousand to one 
hundred thousand dollars in modern money. The 
effect on the Siberian mind was the same as a gold 
find. All the riffraff adventurers of Siberia swarmed 
to the west coast of America. 

We have only the Russian version of the story — 
not the Indians' — and may infer that we have the 
side most favorable to Russia. When booty of half a 
million was to be had for the taking, what Siberian 
exiles would permit an Indian village to stand between 
them and wealth ^ At first only children were seized 
as hostages of good conduct on the part of the Indians 
while the white hunters coasted the islands. Then 
daughters and wives were lured and held on the ships, 
only to be returned when the husbands and fathers 
came back with a big hunt for the white masters. 
Then the men were shot down ; safer dead, thought 
the Russians; no fear of ambush or surprise; and the 
women were held as slaves to be knouted and done to 
death at their masters' pleasure. 

In 1745 — four years after Russia's discovery of 
western America — a whole village in Attoo was de- 
stroyed so that the Russians could seize the women and 
children fleeing for hiding to the hills. The next year 
Russians were caught putting poison in the food of 
another village: the men ate first among the Indians. 
The women would be left as slaves to the Russians; 
and these same Russians carried a pagan boy home to 



84 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

be baptized in the Christian faith; for the httle con- 
vert could come back to the Aleutian Islands as inter- 
preter. It was as thorough a scheme of subjugation 
as the wolf code of existence could have entailed. 

The culmination came with the crew of Betshevin, 
a Siberian merchant, in 1760. There were forty Rus- 
sians, including Cossacks, and twenty other Asiatic 
hunters and sailors. Four of the merchant's agents 
went along to enforce honest returns. Sergeant Push- 
kareff of the Cossacks was there to collect tribute 
from Russia's Indian subjects on the w^est coast of 
America. The ship was evidently better than the 
general run, with ample room in the hold for cargo, 
and wide deck room where the crew slept in ham- 
mocks without cover — usually a gruff, bearded, 
ragged, vermin-infested horde. The vessel touched at 
Oomnak, after having met a sister ship, perhaps with 
an increase of aggressiveness toward the natives owing 
to the presence of these other Russians under Alixei 
Drusenin; and passed on eastw^ard to the next otter 
resort, Oonalaska Island. 

Oonalaska is like a human hand spread out, with 
the fingers northeast, the arm end down seventy miles 
long toward Oomnak Island. The entire broken 
coast probably reaches a circuit of over tw^o hundred 
miles. Down the centre and out each spur are 
high volcanic mountains, two of them smoking vol- 
canoes, all pitted with caves and hot springs whose 
course can be traced in winter by the runnels of steam 



THE OUTLAW HUNTERS 85 

down the mountain side. On the south side, reefs 
Hne all approach. North, east, and west are countless 
abrupt inlets opening directly into the heart of the 
mountains down whose black cliffs shatter plumes of 
spray and cataract. Not a tree grows on the island. 
From base to summit the hills are a velvet sward, 
willow shrubs the size of one's finger, grass waist high, 
and such a wealth of flowers — poppy fields, anemones, 
snowdrops, rhododendrons — that one might be in a 
southern climate instead of close proximity to frozen 
zones. Fogs wreathe the island three-quarters of the 
time; and though snow lies five feet deep in winter, 
and such blizzards riot in from the north as would tear 
trees up by the roots, and drive all human beings to 
their underground dwellings, it is never cold, never 
below zero, and the harbors are always open. Whal- 
ing, fishing, fur hunting — those were the occupations 
of the islanders then, as now. 

Here, then, came Pushkareff in 1762 after two years' 
cruising about the Aleutian Islands. The natives are 
friendly, thinking to obtain iron, and knives, and fire- 
arms like the other islanders who have traded with the 
Russians. Children are given as hostages of good 
conduct for the Oonalaskan men, who lead the Rus- 
sians off to the hunt, coasting from point to point. 
Pushkareff, the Cossack, himself goes off with 
twenty men to explore ; but somehow things go wrong 
at the native villages on this trip. The hostages find 
they are not guests, but slaves. Anyv>^ay, Betshevin's 



86 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

agent is set upon and murdered. Two more Russians 
are speared to death under Pushkareff's eyes, two 
wounded, and the Cossack himself, with his fourteen 
men, forced to beat a hasty retreat back to ships and 
huts on the coast. Here, strange enough, things have 
gone wrong, too ! More women and children object- 
ing to their masters' pleasure — slavery, the knout, the 
branding iron, death by starvation and abuse. Two 
Russians have been slain bathing in the hot springs 
near Makushin Volcano, four murdered at the huts, 
four wounded; and the barrack is burned to the 
ground. Promptly the Cossack wreaks vengeance by 
slaughtering seven of the hostages on the spot; but he 
deems it wise to take refuge on his ship, weigh anchor 
and slip out to sea carrying with him by way of a lesson 
to the natives, two interpreters, three boys, and twenty- 
five women, two of whom die of cruelty before the 
ship is well out of Oonalaskan waters. 

He may have intended dropping the captives at 
some near island on his way westward ; for only blind 
rage could have rendered him so indifferent to their 
fate as to carry such a cargo of human beings back to 
the home harbor of Kamchatka. Meanwhile a hurri- 
cane caught Pushkareff's ship, chopping the wave tops 
off and driving her ahead under bare poles. When 
the gale abated, the ship was off Kamchatka's shore 
and the Cossack in a quandary about entering the 
home port with proofs of his cruelty in the cowering 
group of Indian women huddled above the deck. 



THE OUTLAW HUNTERS 87 

On pretence of gathering berries, six sailors were 
landed with fourteen women. Two watched their 
chance and dashed for liberty in the hills. On the 
way back to the ship, one woman was brained to death 
by a sailor, Gorelin ; seeing which, the others on board 
the jolly-boat took advantage of the confusion, sprang 
overboard, and suicided. But there were still a dozen 
hostages on the ship. These might relate the crime 
of their companions' murder. It was an old trick out 
of an ugly predicament — destroy the victim in order 
to dodge retribution, or torture it so it would destroy 
itself. Fourteen had been tortured into suicide. The 
rest PushkarefF seized, bound, and threw into the sea. 

To be sure, on official investigation, Betshevin, the 
Siberian merchant, was subjected to penal tortures for 
this crime on his ship; and an imperial decree put an 
end to free trade among the fur hunters to America. 
Henceforth a government permit must be obtained; 
but that did not undo the wrong to the Aleutian Isl- 
anders. Primal instincts, unhampered by law, have 
a swift, sure, short-cut to justice; to the fine equipoise 
between weak and strong. It was two years before 
punishment was meted out by the Russian govern- 
ment for this crime. What did the Aleut Indian care 
for the law's slow jargon ? His only law was self- 
preservation. His furs had been plundered from him; 
his hunting-fields overrun by brigands from he knew 
not where; his home outraged; his warriors poisoned, 
bludgeoned, done to death; his women and children 



88 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

kidnapped to lifelong slavery; the very basic, brute 
instincts of his nature tantalized, baited, tortured to 
dare ! 

It was from January to September of 1762, that 
Pushkareff had run his mad course of outrage on 
Oonalaska Island. It was in September of the same 
year, that four other Russian ships, all unconscious of 
the reception PushkareflF's evil doings had prepared 
for them, left Kamchatka for the Aleutian Islands. 
Each of the ships was under a commander who had 
been to the islands before and dealt fairly by the 
Indians. 

Betshevin's ship with Pushkareff, the Cossack, 
reached Kamchatka September 25. On the 6th there 
had come to winter at the harbor a ship under the 
same Alexei Drusenin, who had met Pushkareff the 
year before on the way to Oonalaska. Drusenin was 
outward bound and must have heard the tales told of 
Pushkareff's crew; but the latter had brought back 
in all nearly two thousand otter, — half sent by Druse- 
nin, half brought by himself, — and Oonalaska be- 
came the lodestar of the otter hunters. The spring of 
'63 found Drusenin coasting the Aleutians. Sure 
enough, others had heard news of the great find of the 
new hunting-grounds. Three other Russian vessels 
were on the grounds before him, Glottoff and Med- 
vedeff at Oomnak, Korovin halfway up Oonalaska. 
No time for Drusenin to lose ! A spy sent out came 
back with the report that ever)^ part of Oomnak and 



THE OUTLAW HUNTERS 89 

Oonalaska was being thoroughly hunted except the 
extreme northeast, where the mountain spurs of Oona- 
laska stretch out in the sea like a hand. Up to the 
northeast end, then, where the tide-rip thunders up 
the rock wall like an inverted cataract, posts Drusenin 
where he anchors his ship in Captain Harbor, and has 
winter quarters built before snow-fall of '63. 

An odd thing was — the Indian chiefs became so 
very friendly they voluntarily brought hostages of good 
conduct to Drusenin. Surely Drusenin was in luck ! 
The best otter-hunting grounds in the world ! A har- 
bor as smooth as glass, mountain-girt, sheltered as a 
hole in a wall, right in the centre of the hunting-grounds, 
yet shut off from the rioting north winds that shook the 
rickety vessels to pieces ! And best of all, along the 
sandy shore between the ship and the mountains that 
receded inland tier on tier into the clouds — the dome- 
roofed, underground dwellings of two or three thou- 
sand native hunters ready to risk the surf of the otter 
hunt at Drusenin's beck ! Just to make sure of safety 
after Pushkareff's losses of ten men on this island, Dru- 
senin exchanges a letter or two with the commanders 
of those other three Russian vessels. Then he laid 
his plans for the winter's hunt. But so did the Aleut 
Indians; and their plans were for a man-hunt of every 
Russian within the limits of Oonalaska. 

A curious story is told of how the Aleuts arranged 
to have the uprising simultaneous and certain. A 
bunch of sticks was carried to the chief of every tribe. 



90 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

These were burned one a day, like the skin wick in the 
seal oil of the Aleut's stone lamp. When the last 
stick had burned, the Aleuts were to rise. 

Now, the northeast coast was like the fingers of a 
hando Drusenin had anchored between two moun- 
tain spurs like fingers. Eastward, across the next 
mountain spur was another village — Kalekhta, of 
some forty houses; eastward of Kalekhta, again, ten 
miles across, another village of seventy families on the 
island of Inalook. Drusenin decided to divide his 
crew into three hunting parties : one of nine men to 
guard the ship and trade with the main village of Cap- 
tain Harbor; a second of eleven, to cross to the native 
huts at Kalekhta; a third of eleven, to cross the hills, 
and paddle out to the little island of Inalook. To the 
island ten miles off shore, Drusenin went himself, 
with Korelin, a wrecked Russian whom he had picked 
up on the voyage. On the way they must have passed 
all three mountains, that guard the harbor of Oona- 
laska, the waterfalls that pour over the cliffs near 
Kalekhta, and the little village itself where eleven men 
remained to build huts for the winter. From the vil- 
lage to the easternmost point was over quaking moss 
ankle-deep, or through long, rank grass, waist-high and 
water-rotted with sea-fog. Here they launched their 
boat of sea-lion skin on a bone frame, and pulled 
across a bay of ten miles to the farthermost hunting- 
grounds. Again, the natives overwhelm Drusenin 
with kindness. The Russian keeps his sentinels as 



THE OUTLAW HUNTERS 91 

vigilant as ever pacing before the doors of the hut; 
but he goes unguarded and unharmed among the 
native dweUings. Perhaps, poor Drusenin was not 
above swaggering a Httle, belted in the gay uniform 
Russian officers loved to wear, to the confounding of 
the poor Aleut who looked on the pistols in belt, the 
cutlass dangling at heel, the bright shoulder straps 
and colored cuffs, as insignia of a power almighty. 
Anyway, after Drusenin had sent five hunters out in 
the fields to lay fox-traps, early in the morning of 
December 4, he set out with a couple of Cossack friends 
to visit a native house. Korelin, the rescued castaway, 
and two other men kept guard at the huts.^ 

At that time, and until very recently, the Aleuts' 
winter dwelling was a domed, thatched roof over a 
cellar excavation three or four feet deep, circular and 
big enough to lodge a dozen families. The entrance 
to this was a low-roofed, hall-like annex, dark as 
night, leading with a sudden pitch downward into the 
main circle. Now, whether the Aleut had counted 
burning fagots, or kept tally some other way, the 
count was up. Barely had Drusenin stepped into the 
dark of the inner circle, when a blow clubbed down on 
his skull that felled him to earth. The Cossack, com- 
ing second, had stumbled over the prostrate body be- 
fore either had any suspicion of danger; and in a 

^ Some of the old records spell the name of this wrecked Russian " Korelin," as 
if it were "Gorelin," the sailor, of PushkarefF's crew, who brained the Indian girl; 
I am unable to determine whether " Korelin" and '* Gorelin " are the same man oi 
not. If so, then the punishment came home indeed. 



92 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

second, both were cut to pieces by knives traded to 
the Indians the day before for otter skins. 

Shevyrin, the third man, happened to be carrying 
an axe. One against a score, he yet kept his face to the 
enemy, beat a retreat backward striking right and 
left with the axe, then turned and fled for very hfe, 
with a shower of arrows and lances falling about him, 
that drenched him in his own blood. Already a 
crash of muskets told of battle at the huts. More 
dead than alive, the pursued Russian turned but to 
strike his assailants back. Then, he was at the huts 
almost stumbling over the man who had probably 
been doing sentinel duty but was now under the spears 
of the crowd — when the hut door opened ; and Korelin, 
the Russian, dashed out flourishing a yard-long bear 
knife under protection of the other guard's musket 
fire from the window, slashed to death two of the 
nearest Indians, cut a swath that sent the others scat- 
tering, seized the two wounded men, dragged them 
inside the hut, and slammed the door to the enraged 
yells of the baffled warriors. 

Some one has said that Oonalaska and Oomnak are 
the smelting furnaces of America. Certainly, the 
volcanic caves supplied sulphur that the natives knew 
how to use as match lighters. The savages were with- 
out firearms, but might have burned out the Russians 
had it not been for the constant fusillade of musketry 
from door and roof and parchment windows of the 
hut. Two of the Russians were wounded and weak 



THE OUTLAW HUNTERS 



93 



from loss of blood. The other two never remitted 
their guard day or night for four days, neither sleeping 
nor eating, till the wounded pair, having recovered 
somewhat, seized pistols and cutlasses, waited till a 
quelling of the musketry tempted the Indians near, 
then sallied out with a flare of their pistols, that dropped 
three Aleuts on the spot, wounded others, and drove 
the rest to a distance. But in the sortie, there had 
been flaunted in their very faces, the coats and caps 
and daggers of the five hunters Drusenin had sent fox 
trapping. Plainly, the fox hunters had been mas- 
sacred. The four men were alone surrounded by 
hundreds of hostiles, ten miles from the shores of 
Oonalaska, twenty from the other hunting detach- 
ments and the ship. But w^ater was becoming a des- 
perate need. To stay cooped up in the hut was to be 
forced into surrender. Their only chance was to risk 
all by a dash from the island. Dark was gathering. 
Through the shadowy dusk watched the Aleuts; but 
the pointed muskets of the two wounded men kept 
hostiles beyond distance of spear-tossing, while the 
other two Russians destroyed what they could not 
carry away, hauled down their skin boat to the water 
loaded with provisions, ammunition, and firearms, 
then under guard of levelled pistols, pulled off^ in the 
darkness across the sea, heaving and thundering to 
the night tide. 

But the sea was the lesser danger. Once away 
from the enemy, the four fugitives pulled for dear life 



94 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

across the tumbling waves — ten miles the way they 
went, one account says — to the main shore of Oona- 
laska. It was pitch dark. When they reached the 
shore, they could neither hear nor see a sign of life; 
but the moss trail through the snows had probably 
become well beaten to the ship by this time — four 
months from Drusenin's landing — or else the fugi- 
tives found their way by a kind of desperation; for 
before daybreak they had run within shouting distance 
of the second detachment of hunters stationed at 
Kalekhta. Not a sound ! Not a light ! Perhaps they 
had missed their way ! Perhaps the Indians on the 
main island are still friendly ! Shevyrin or Korelin 
utters a shout, followed by the signal of a musket shot 
for that second party of hunters to come out and help. 
Scarcely had the crash died over the snows, when out 
of the dark leaped a hundred lances, a hundred faces, 
a hundred shrieking, bloodthirsty savages. Now they 
realize the mistake of having landed, of having aban- 
doned the skin boat back on the beach there \ But no 
time to retrace steps ! Only a wild dash through the 
dark, catching by each other to keep together, up to a 
high precipitous rock they know is somewhere here, 
with the sea behind, sheer drop on each side, and but 
one narrow approach ! Here they make their stand, 
muskets and sword in hand, beating the assailants 
back, wherever a stealthy form comes climbing up the 
rock to hurl spear or lance ! Presently, a well-directed 
fusillade drives the savages off! While night still hid 



THE OUTLAW HUNTERS 95 

them, the four fugitives scrambled down the side of 
the rock farthest from the savages, and ran for the 
roadstead where the ship had anchored. 

As dawn comes up over the harbor something catches 
the attention of the runners. It is the main hatch, the 
planking, the mast poles of the ship, drawn up and 
scattered on the beach. Drusenin's ship has been 
destroyed. The crew is massacred; they, alone, have 
escaped ; and the nearest help is one of those three other 
Russian ships anchored somewhere seventy miles west. 
Without waiting to look more, the three men ran for 
the mountains of the interior, found hiding in one of the 
deep-grassed ravines, scooped out a hole in the sand, 
covered this with a sail white as snow, and crawled 
under in hiding for the day. 

The next night they came down to the shore, in the 
hope, perhaps, of finding refugees like themselves. 
They discovered only the. mangled bodies of their 
comrades, literally hacked to pieces. A saint's image 
and a book of prayers lay along the sand. Scattered 
everywhere were flour sacks, provisions, ships' plank- 
ing. These they carried back as well as they could 
three miles in the mountains. A pretty legend is told 
of a native hunter following their tracks to this retreat, 
and not only refusing to betray them but secretly carry- 
ing provisions; and some such explanation is needed 
to know how the four men lived hidden in the moun- 
tains from December 9 to February 2, 1764. 

If they had known where those other Russian ships 



96 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

were anchored, they might have struck across country 
to them, or followed the coast by night; but rival hunters 
did not tell each other where they anchored, and tracks 
across country could have been followed. The track- 
less sea was safer. 

There is another story of how the men hid in moun- 
tain caves all those weeks, kept alive by the warmth of 
hot springs, feeding on clams and shell-fish gathered 
at night. This, too, may be true; for the mountains 
inland of Oonalaska Harbor are honeycombed with 
caves, and there are well-known hot springs. 

By February they had succeeded in making a skin 
skiff of the leather sacks. They launched this on the 
harbor and, stealing away unseen, rounded the north- 
west coast of Oonalaska's hand projecting into the sea, 
travelling at night southwestward, seeking the ships 
of Korovin, or Medvedeff, or Glottoff. Now the ma- 
jority of voyagers don't care to coast this part of Oona- 
laska at night during the winter in a safe ship; and 
these men had nothing between them and the abyss of 
the sea but the thickness of a leather sack badly oiled 
to keep out water. Their one hope was — a trader's 
vessel. 

All night, for a week, they coasted within the shadow 
of the shore rocks, hiding by day, passing three Indian 
villages undiscovered. Distance gave them courage. 
They now paddled by day, and just as they rounded 
Makushin Volcano, lying like a great white corpse five 
thousand feet above Bering Sea, they came on five 



THE OUTLAW HUNTERS 



97 



Indians, who at once landed and running alongshore 
gave the alarm. The refugees for the second time 
sought safety on a rock; but the rising tide drove them 
off. Seizing the light boat, they ran for shelter in a 
famous cave of the volcanic mountain. Here, for five 
weeks, they resisted constant siege, not a Russian of 
the four daring to appear within twenty yards of the 
cave entrance before a shower of arrows fell inside. 
Their only food now was the shell-fish gathered at 
night; their only water, snow scooped from gutters of 
the cave. Each night one watched by turn while the 
others slept; and each night one must make a dash 
to gather the shell-fish. Five weeks at last tired the 
Indians' vigilance out. One dark night the Russians 
succeeded in launching out undetected. That day 
they hid, but daybreak of the next long pull showed 
them a ship in the folds of the mountain coast — 
Korovin's vessel. They reached the ship on the 30th 
of March. Poor Shevyrin soon after died from his 
wounds in the underground hut, but Korovin's troubles 
had only begun. 

Ivan Korovin's vessel had sailed out of Avacha Bay, 
Kamchatka, just two weeks before Pushkareff's crew 
of criminals came home. It had become customary for 
the hunting vessels to sail to the Commander Islands 
— Bering and Copper — nearest Kamchatka, and 
winter there, laying up a store of sea-cow meat, the huge 
bovine of the sea, which was soon to be exterminated 
by the hunters. Here Korovin met Denis Medvedeff's 



98 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

crew, also securing a year's supply of meat for the hunt 
of the sea-otter. The two leaders must have had 
some inkling of trouble ahead, for MedvedefF gave 
Korovin ten more sailors, and the two signed a written 
contract to help each other in time of need. 

In spring (1763) both sailed for the best sea-otter 
fields then known — Oonalaska and Oomnak, Korovin 
with thirty-seven men, MedvedefF, forty-nine. In 
order not to interfere with each other's hunt, Medve- 
defF stopped at Oomnak, Korovin went on to Oonalaska. 
Anchoring sixty yards from shore, not very far from the 
volcano caves, where Drusenin's four fugitives were to 
fight for their lives the following spring, Korovin 
landed with fourteen men to reconnoitre. Deserted 
houses he saw, but never a living soul. Going back to 
the ship for more men, he set out again and went 
inland five miles where he found a village of three 
hundred souls. Three chiefs welcomed him, showed 
receipts for tribute of furs given by the Cossack collector 
of a previous ship, and gave over three boys as hostages 
of good conduct — one, called Alexis, the son of a 
chief. Meanwhile, letters were exchanged with Med- 
vedefF down a hundred miles at Oomnak. All was 
well. The time had not come. It was only September 
— about the same time that Drusenin up north was 
sending out his hunters in three detachments. 

Korovin was so thoroughly satisfied all was safe, 
that he landed his entire cargo and crew, and while the 
carpenters were building wintering huts out of drift- 



THE OUTLAW HUNTERS 99 

wood, set out himself, with two skin boats, to coast 
northeast. For four days he followed the very shore 
that the four escaping men were to cruise in an oppo- 
site direction. About forty miles from the anchorage 
he met Drusenin himself, leading twenty-five Rus- 
sian hunters out from Captain Harbor. Surely, if ever 
hunters were safe, Korovin's were, with MedvedefF's 
forty-nine men southwest a hundred miles, and Dru- 
senin's thirty sailors forty miles northeast. Korovin 
decided to hunt midway between Drusenin's crew 
and Medvedeff's. It is likely that the letters exchanged 
among the different commanders from September to 
December were arranging that Drusenin should keep 
to the east of Oonalaska, Korovin to the west of the 
island, while Medvedeff hunted exclusively on the other 
island — Oomnak. 

By December Korovin had scattered twenty-three 
hunters southwest, keeping a guard of only sixteen 
for the huts and boat. Among the sixteen was little 
Alexis, the hostage Indian boy. The warning of dan- 
ger was from the mother of the little Aleut, who re- 
ported that sixty hostiles were advancing on the ship 
under pretence of trading sea-otter. Between the 
barracks and the sea front flowed a stream. Here 
the Cossack guard took their stand, armed head to 
foot, permitting only ten Indians at a time to enter the 
huts for trade. The Aleuts exchanged their sea-otter 
for what iron they could get, and departed without any 
sign. Korovin had almost concluded it was a false 



loo VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

alarm, when three Indian servants of Drusenin's ship 
came dashing breathless across country with news that 
the ship and all the Russians on the east end of Oona- 
laska had been destroyed. 

Including the three newcomers, Korovin had only 
nineteen men ; and his hostages numbered almost as 
strong. The panic-stricken sailors were for burning 
huts and ship, and escaping overland to the twenty- 
three hunters somewhere southwest. 

It was the loth of December — the very night when 
Drusenin's fugitives had taken to hiding in the north 
mountains. While Korovin was still debating what to 
do, an alarm came from beneath the keel of the ship. 
In the darkness, the sea was suddenly alive with hun- 
dreds of skin skiffs each carrying from eight to twenty 
Indian warriors. One can well believe that lanterns 
swinging from bow and stern, and lights behind the 
talc windows of the huts, were put suddenly out to 
avoid giving targets for the hurricane of lances and darts 
and javelins that came hurtling through the air. Two 
Russians fell dead, reducing Korovin's defence to 
fourteen; but a quick swing of musketry exacted five 
Indian lives for the two dead whites. At the end of 
four days, the Russians were completely exhausted. 
The besiegers withdrew to a cave on the mountain side, 
perhaps to tempt Korovin on land. 

Quick as thought, Korovin buried his iron deep 
under the barracks, set fire to the huts, and concentrated 
all his forces on the vessel, where he wisely carried the 



THE OUTLAW HUNTERS loi 

hostages with him and sheered fifty yards farther off 
shore. Had the riot of winter winds not been driving 
mountain billows along the outer coast, he might have 
put to sea; but he had no proof the twenty-three men 
gone inland hunting to the south might not be yet alive, 
and a winter gale would have dashed his ship to kin- 
dling wood outside the sheltered harbor. 

Food was short, water was short, and the ship over- 
crowded with hostages. To make matters worse, 
scurvy broke out among the crew; and the hostiles 
renewed the attack, surrounding the Russian ship in 
forty canoes with ten to twenty warriors in each. An 
ocean vessel of the time, or even a pirate ship, could have 
scattered the assailants in a few minutes; but the Rus- 
sian hunting vessels were long, low, flat-bottomed, 
rickety-planked craft, of perhaps sixty feet in length, 
with no living accommodation below decks, and very 
poor hammock space above. Hostages and scurvy- 
stricken Russians were packed in the hold with the 
meat stores and furs like dying rats in a garbage barrel. 
It was as much as a Russian's life was worth, to show 
his head above the hatchway; and the siege lasted 
from the middle of December to the 30th of March, 
when Drusenin's four refugees, led by Korelin, made a 
final dash from Makushin Volcano, and gained Koro- 
vin's ship. 

With the addition of the fugitives, Korovin now had 
eighteen Russians. The Indian father of the hostage, 



I02 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

Alexis, had come to demand back his son. Korovin 
freed the boy at once. By the end of April, the spring 
gales had subsided, and though half his men were 
prostrate with scurvy, there was nothing for Korovin 
to do but dare the sea. They sailed out from Oona- 
laska on April 26 heading back toward Oomnak, 
where Medvedeff had anchored. 

In the straits between the different Aleutian Islands 
runs a terrific tide-rip. Crossing from Oonalaska to 
Oomnak, Korovin's ship was caught by the counter- 
currents and cross winds. Not more than five men 
were well enough to stand upon their feet. The ship 
drifted without pilot or oarsmen, and driving the full 
force of wind and tide foundered on the end of Oom- 
nak Island. Ammunition, sails, and skins for fresh 
rowboats were all that could be saved of the wreck. 
One scurvy-stricken sailor was drowned trying to 
reach land ; another died on being lifted from the 
stiflingly close hold to fresh air. Eight hostages sprang 
overboard and escaped. Of the sixteen white men and 
four hostages left, three were powerless from scurvy. 
This last blow on top of a winter's siege was too much 
for the Russians. Their enfeebled bodies were totally 
exhausted. Stretching sails round as a tent and sta- 
tioning ten men at a time as sentinels, they slept the 
first unbroken sleep they had known in five months. 
The tired-out sentinels must have fallen asleep at their 
places; for just as day dawned came a hundred savages, 
stealthy and silent, seeking the ship that had slipped 



THE OUTLAW HUNTERS 103 

out from Oonalaska. Landing without a sound, they 
crept up within ten yards of the tents, stabbed the sleep- 
ing sentinels to death, and let go such a whiz of arrows 
and lances at the tent walls, that three of the Indian 
hostages inside were killed and every Russian wounded. 

Korovin had not even time to seize his firearms. 
Cutlass in hand, followed by four men — all wounded 
and bleeding like himself — he dashed out, slashed two 
savages to death, and scattered the rest at the sword 
point. A shower of spears was the Indians' answer to 
this. Wounded anew, the five Russians could scarcely 
drag themselves back to the tent where by this time 
the others had seized the firearms. 

All that day and night, a tempest lashed the shore. 
The stranded ship fell to pieces like a boat of paper; 
and the attacking islanders strewed the provisions to 
the winds with shrieks of laughter. On the 30th of 
April, the assailants began firing muskets, which they 
had captured from Korovin's massacred hunters ; but the 
shots fell wide of the mark. Then they brought sul- 
phur from the volcanic caves, and set fire to the long 
grass on the windward side of the tents. Again, Korovin 
sallied out, drove them off, and extinguished the fire. 
May, June, and half July he lay stranded here, waiting 
for his men to recover, and when they recovered, setting 
them to build a boat of skin and driftwood. 

Toward the third week of July, a skin boat twenty- 
four feet long was finished. In this were laid the 
wounded; and the well men took to the paddles. All 



I04 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

night they paddled westward and still westward, 
night after night, seeking the third vessel — that of 
Denis MedvedefF, who had come with them the year 
before from Bering Island. On the tenth day, Russian 
huts and a stone bath-house were seen on the shore of 
a broad inlet. Not a soul was stirring. As Korovin's 
boat approached, bits of sail, ships' wreckage, and pro- 
visions were seen scattered on the shore. Fearing the 
worst, Korovin landed. Signs of a struggle were on 
every hand ; and in the bath-house, still clothed but 
with thongs round their necks as if they had been 
strangled to death, lay twenty of Medvedeff's crew. 
Closer examination showed Medvedeff himself among 
the slain. Not a soul was left to tell the story of the 
massacre, not a word ever heard about the fate of the 
others in the crew. Korovin's last hope was gone. 
There was no third ship to carry him home. He was 
in the very act of ordering his men to construct 
winter quarters, when Stephen Glottoff, a famous 
hunter on the way back from Kadiak westw^ard, 
appeared marching across the sands followed by eight 
men. Glottoff had heard of the massacres from natives 
on the north shore with whom he was friendly; and 
had sent out rescue parties to seek the survivors on the 
south coast of whom the Indian spies told. 

The poor fugitives embraced Glottoff, and went 
almost mad with joy. But like the prospector, who 
suffers untold hardships seeking the wealth of gold, 
these seekers of wealth in furs could not relinquish the 



THE OUTLAW HUNTERS 105 

wild freedom of the perilous life. They signed con- 
tracts to hunt with GlottofF for the year. 

It is no part of this story to tell how the Cossack, 
Solovieff, entered on a campaign of punishment for 
the Aleuts when he came. Whole villages were blown 
up by mines of powder in birch bark. Fugitives 
dashing from the conflagration were sabred by the 
Russians, as many as a hundred Aleuts butchered at a 
time, villages of three hundred scattered to the winds, 
warriors bound hand and foot in line, and shot down. 

Sufl&ce it to say, scurvy slaked Solovieff^'s vengeance. 
Both Aleuts and Russians had learned the one all-im- 
portant lesson — the Christian's doctrine of retribution, 
the scientist's law of equilibrium — -that brute force met 
by brute force ends only in mutual destruction, in 
anarchy, in death. Thirty years later, Vancouver visit- 
ing the Russians could report that their influence on 
the Indians was of the sort that springs from deep- 
rooted kindness and identity of interests. Both sides 
had learned there was a better way than the wolf code.^ 

'^ It would be almost impossible to quote all the authorities on this massacre of the 
Russians; and every one who has written on Russian fur trade in America gives different 
scraps of the tragedy ; but nearly all can be traced back to the detailed account in Coxe's 
Disco-veries of the Russians hetiveen Asia and America, and on this I have relied, the 
French edition of 1781. The Census Report, Vol. VIII, 1880, by Ivan Petroff, is 
invaluable for topography and ethnology of this period and region. It was from Korelin, 
one of the four refugees, that the Russian archivists took the first account of the massacre ; 
and Coxe's narrative is based on Korelin's story, though the tradition of the massacre 
has been handed down from father to child among Oonalaskans to this day ; so that 
certain caves near Captain Harbor, and Makushin Volcano are still pointed out as the 
refuge of the four pursued Russians. 



CHAPTER V 

1768-1772 

COUNT MAURITIUS BENYOWSKY, THE POLISH 
PIRATE 

Siberian Exiles under Polish Soldier of Fortune plot to overthrow 
Garrison of Kamchatka and escape to West Coast of America as 
Fur Traders — A Bloody Melodrama enacted at Bolcheresk — The 
Count and his Criminal Crew sail to America 

Fur hunters, world over, live much the same life. 

It M^as the beaver led French voyageurs westward to 
the Rocky Mountains. It was the sea-otter brought 
Russian coasters cruising southward from Alaska to 
California ; and it was the little sable set the mad pace 
of the Cossacks' wild rush clear across Siberia to the 
shores of the Pacific. The tribute that the riotous 
Cossacks collected, whether from Siberia or America, 
was tribute in furs. 

The farther the hunters wandered, the harder it was 
to obtain supplies from the cities. In each case — in 
New France, on the Missouri, in Siberia — this com- 
pelled resort to the same plan; a grand rallying place, 
a yearly rendezvous, a stamping-ground for hunters 
and traders. Here merchants brought their goods; 

106 



THE POLISH PIRATE 107 

hunters, their furs; hght-fingered gentry, offscourings 
from everywhere, horses to sell, or smuggled whiskey, 
or plunder that had been picked up in ways untold. 

The great meeting place for Russian fur traders was 
on a plain east of the Lena River, not far from Yakutsk, 
a thousand miles in a crow line from the Pacific. In 
the fall of 1770 there had gathered here as lawless 
birds of a feather as ever scoured earth for prey. Mer- 
chants from the inland cities had floated down supplies 
to the plain on white and black and lemon-painted 
river barges. Long caravans of pack horses and mules 
and tented wagons came rumbling dust-covered across 
the fields, bells ajingle, driven by Cossacks all the way 
from St. Petersburg, six thousand miles. Through 
snow-padded forests, over wind-swept plains, across 
the heaving mountains of two continents, along deserts 
and Siberian rivers, almost a year had the caravans 
travelled. These, for the most part, carried ship 
supplies — cordage, tackling, iron — for vessels to be 
built on the Pacific to sail for America. 

Then there rode in at furious pace, from the northern 
steppes of Siberia, the Cossack tribute collectors — 
four hundred of them centred here — who gathered 
one-tenth of the furs for the Czar, nine-tenths for 
themselves: drunken brawlers they were, lawless as 
Arabs; and the only law they knew was the law 
they wielded. Tartar hordes came with horses to 
sell, freebooters of the boundless desert, banditti in 
league with the Cossacks to smuggle across the bor- 



io8 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

ders of the Chinese. And Chinese smugglers, splendid 
in silk attire, hobnobbed with exiles, who included 
every class from courtiers banished for political of- 
fences to criminals with ears cut off and faces slit open. 
What with drink and play and free fights — if the 
Czar did not hear, it was because he was far away. 

On this August night half a dozen new exiles had 
come in with the St. Petersburg cavalcade. The 
prisoners were set free on parole to see the sights, 
while their Cossack guard went on a spree. The new- 
comers seemed above the common run of criminals 
sent to Siberia, better clothed, of the air born to com- 
mand, and in possession of money. The leading 
spirit among them was a young Pole, twenty-eight 
years or thereabouts, of noble rank, Mauritius Be- 
nyowsky, very lame from a battle wound, but plainly 
a soldier of fortune who could trump every trick 
fate played him, and give as good knocks as he got. 
Four others were officers of the army in St. Petersburg, 
exiled for political reasons. Only one, Hippolite 
Stephanow, was a criminal in the sense of having 
broken law. 

Hoffman, a German surgeon, welcomed them to his 
quarters at Yakutsk. Where were they going ? — To 
the Pacific .? ^ — ^"Ah; a long journey from St. Peters- 
burg; seven thousand miles!" That was where he 
was to go when he had finished surgical duties on the 
Lena. By that they knew he, too, was an exile, 
practising his profession on parole. He would advise 



THE POLISH PIRATE 



109 



them — cautiously feeling his ground — to get trans- 
ferred as soon as they could from the Pacific coast to 
the Peninsula of Kamchatka; that was safer for an 
exile — fewer guards, farther from the Cossacks of 
the mainland; in fact, nearer America, where exiles 
might make a 



fortune in the 
fur trade. Had 
they heard of 
schemes in the 
air among Rus- 
sians for ships 
to plunder furs 
in America 
"with powder 
and hatchets and 
the help of God," 
as the Russians 
say ? 




Mauritius Augustus, Count Benyowsky. 



Benyowsky, 

the Pole, jumped to the bait like a trout to the fly. If 
"powder and hatchets and the help of God" — and 
an exile crew — could capture wealth in the fur trade 
of western America, why not a break for freedom ? 

They didn't scruple as to means, these men. Why 
should they } They had been penned in festering 
dungeons, where the dead lay, corrupting the air till 
living and dead became a diseased mass. They had 
been knouted for differences of political opinion. They 



no VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

had been whisked off at midnight from St. Petersburg 
— mile after mile, week after week, month after month, 
across the snows, with never a word of explanation, 
knowing only from the jingle of many bells that other 
prisoners were in the long procession. Now their 
hopes took fire from Hoffman's tales of Russian plans 
for fur trade. The path of the trackless sea seems 
always to lead to a boundless freedom. 

In a word, before they had left Hoffman, they had 
bound themselves by oath to try to seize a fur-trad- 
ing ship to escape across the Pacific. Stephanow, the 
common convict, was the one danger. He might play 
spy and obtain freedom by betraying all. To pre- 
vent this, each man was required to sign his name to 
an avowal of the conspirators' aim. Hoffman was to 
follow as soon as he could. Meanwhile he kept the 
documents, which were written in German ; and Be- 
nyowsky, the Pole, was elected chief. 

The Cossack guards came sulkily back from their 
gambling bout. The exiles were placed in elk-team 
sleds, and the remaining thousand miles to the Pacific 
resumed. But the spree had left the soldiers with sore 
heads. At the first camping place they were gam- 
bling again. On the sixth day out luck turned so 
heavily against one soldier that he lost his entire 
belongings to the captain of the troops, flew in a 
towering rage, and called his officer some black- 
guard name. The oflicer nonchalantly took over the 



THE POLISH PIRATE iii 

gains, swallowed the insult, and commanded the other 
Cossacks to tie the fellow up and give him a hun- 
dred lashes. 

For a moment consternation reigned. There are 
some unwritten laws even among the Cossacks. To 
play the equal, when there was money to win, then act 
the despot when offended, was not according to the 
laws of good fellows among Cossacks. Before the 
officer knew where he was, he had been seized, bundled 
out of the tent, stripped naked and flogged on the bare 
back three hundred strokes. 

He was still roaring with rage and pain and fear 
when a coureur came thundering over the path from 
Yakutsk with word that Hoffman had died suddenly, 
leaving certain papers suspected of conspiracy, which 
were being forwarded for examination to the com- 
mander on the Pacific. The coureur handed the 
paper to the officer of the guards. Not a man of the 
Cossacks could read German. What the papers were 
the terrified exiles knew. If word of the plot reached 
the Pacific, they might expect knouting, perhaps muti- 
lation, or lifelong, hopeless servitude in the chain- 
gangs of the mines. 

One chance of frustrating detection remained — 
the Cossack officer looked to the exiles for protection 
against his men. For a week the cavalcade moved 
sullenly on, the soldiers jeering in open revolt at the 
officer, the officer in terror for his life, the exiles quak- 
ing with fear. The road led to a swift, somewhat 



112 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

dangerous river. The Cossacks were ordered to swim 
the elk teams across. The officer went on the raft to 
guard the prisoners, on whose safe dehvery his own 
hfe depended. With hoots of laughter, that could 
not be reported as disobedience, the Cossacks hustled 
the snorting elk teams against the raft. A deft hoist 
from the pole of some unseen diver below, and the raft 
load was turned helter-skelter upside down in the 
middle of the river, the commander going under heels 
up ! When officer and exiles came scrambling up the 
bank wet as water-rats, they were welcomed with shouts 
by the Cossacks. Officer and prisoners lighted a fire 
to dry clothes. Soldiers rummaged out the brandy 
casks, and were presently so deep in drunken sleep not 
a man of the guard was on his feet. Benyowsky 
waited till the commander, too, slept. Then the Pole 
limped, careful as a cat over cut glass, to the coat drying 
before the fire, drew out the packet of documents, and 
found what the exiles had feared — Hoffman's papers 
in German, with orders to the commander on the 
Pacific to keep the conspirators fettered till instruc- 
tions came the next year from St. Petersburg. 

The prisoners realized that all must be risked in 
one desperate cast of the dice. "I and time against 
all men," says the proverb. No fresh caravan would 
be likely to come till spring. Meanwhile they must 
play against time. Burning the packet to ashes, they 
replaced it with a forged order instructing the com- 
mander on the Pacific to treat the exiles with all free- 



THE POLISH PIRATE 



113 



dom and liberality, and to forward them by the first 
boat outward bound for Kamchatka. 

The governor at Okhotsk did precisely as the packet 
instructed. He allowed them out on parole. He sup- 
plied them with clothing and money. He forwarded 
them to Kamchatka on the first boat outward bound, 
the St. Peter and Paul, with forty-three of a crew and 
ten cannon, which had just come back from punishing 
American Indians for massacring the Russians. 

A year less two days from the night they had been 
whisked out of St. Petersburg, the exiles reached their 
destination — the little log fort or ostrog of Bolche- 
resk, about twenty miles up from the sea on the inner 
side of Kamchatka, one hundred and fifty miles over- 
land from the Pacific. The rowboat conducting the 
exiles up-stream met rafts of workmen gliding down 
the current. Rafts and rowboat paused within call. 
The raftsmen wanted news from Europe. Benyowsky 
answered that exiles had no news. "Who are you ?" 
an officer demanded bluntly. Always and uncon- 
sciously playing the hero part of melodrama, Benyow- 
sky replied — "Once a soldier and a general, now a 
slave." Shouts of laughter broke from the raftsmen. 
The enraged Pole was for leaping overboard and 
thrashing them to a man for their mockery; but they 
called out, "no offence had been meant" : they, too, were 
exiles; their laughter was welcome; they had suffered 
enough in Kamchatka to know that when men must 
laugh or weep, better, much better, laugh ! Even as they 



114 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

laughed came the tears. With a rear sweep, the rafts 
headed about and escorted the newcomers to the for- 
tress, where they were locked for the night. After all, 
a welcome to exile was a sardonic sort of mirth. 

Kamchatka occupies very much the same position 
on the Pacific as Italy to the Mediterranean, or Nor- 
way to the North Sea. Its people were nomads, wild 
as American Indians, but Russia had established gar- 
risons of Cossacks — collectors of tribute in furs — 
all over the peninsula, of whom four hundred were 
usually moving from place to place, three hundred 
stationed at Bolcheresk, the seat of government, on 
the inner coast of the peninsula. 

The capital itself was a curious conglomeration 
of log huts stuck away at the back of beyond, with all 
the gold lace and court satins and regimental formali- 
ties of St. Petersburg in miniature. On one side of 
a deep ravine, was the fort or ostrog — a palisaded 
courtyard of some two or three hundred houses, joined 
together like the face of a street, with assembly rooms, 
living apartments, and mess rooms on one side of a 
passageway, kitchens, servants' quarters, and barracks 
for the Cossacks on the other side of the aisle. Two 
or three streets of these double-rowed houses made up 
the fort. Few of the houses contained more than 
three rooms, but the rooms were large as halls, one 
hundred by eighty feet, some of them, with whip- 
sawed floors, clay-chinked log walls, parchment win- 



THE POLISH PIRATE 115 

dows, and furniture hewed out of the green fir trees of 
the mountains. But the luxurious Hving made up for 
the bareness of furnishings. Shining samovars sung 
in every room. Rugs of priceless fur concealed the 
rough flooring. Chinese silks, Japanese damasks, — 
Oriental tapestries smuggled in by the fur traders, — 
covered the walls; and richest of silk attired the Rus- 
sian officers and their ladies, compelled to beguile time 
here, where the only break in monotony was the arrival 
of fresh ships from America, or exiles from St. Peters- 
burg, or gambling or drinking or dancing or feasting 
the long winter nights through, with, perhaps, a duel in 
the morning to settle midnight debts. Just across a 
deep ravine from the fort was another kind of settle- 
ment — ten or a dozen yurtSy thatch-roofed, circular 
houses half underground like cellars, grouped about 
a square hall or barracks in the centre. In this village 
dwelt the exiles, earning their living by hunting or 
acting as servants for the officers of the Cossacks. 

Here, then, came Benyowsky and his companions, 
well received because of forged letters sent on, but with 
no time to lose; for the first spring packet overland 
might reveal their conspiracy. The raftsmen, who 
had welcomed them, now turned hosts and housed 
the newcomers. The Pole was assigned to an educated 
Russian, who had been eight years in exile. 

"How can you stand it? Do you fear death too 
much to dare one blow for liberty .?" Benyowsky asked 
the other, as they sat over their tea that first night. 



Ti6 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

But a spy might ask the same question. The Rus- 
sian evaded answer, and a few hours later showed the 
Pole books of travel, among which were maps of the 
Philippines, where twenty or thirty exiles might go 
if they had a leader. 

Leader ? Benyowsky leaped to his feet with hands 
on pistol and cutlass with which he had been armed 
that morning when Governor Nilow liberated them to 
hunt on parole. Leader ? Were they men ? Was this 
settlement, too, ready to rise if they had a leader ? 

No time to lose ! Within a month, cautious as a 
man living over a volcano, the Polish nobleman had 
enlisted twenty recruits from the exile settlement, 
bound to secrecy by oath, and a score more from a 
crew of sailor exiles back from America, mutinous over 
brutal treatment by their captain. In addition to 
secrecy, each conspirator bound himself to implicit 
and instant obedience to Benyowsky, their chief, and 
to slay each with his own hand any member of the 
band found guilty of betrayal. But what gave the 
Pole his greatest power was his relation to the gov- 
ernor. The coming of the young nobleman had 
caused a flutter in the social life of the dull little fort. 
He had been appointed secretary to Governor Nilow, 
and tutor to his children. The governor's lady was 
the widow of a Swedish exile; and it took the Pole but 
a few interviews to discover that wife and family fa- 
vored the exiles rather than their Russian lord. In 
fact, the good woman suggested to the Pole that he 



THE POLISH PIRATE 117 

should prevent her sixteen-year-old daughter becoming 
wife to a Cossack by marrying her himself. 

The Pole's first move was to ask the governor's 
permission to establish a colony of exile farmers in the 
south of the peninsula. The request was granted. 
This created a good excuse for the gathering of the 
provisions that would be needed for the voyage on the 
Pacific; but when the exiles further requested a fur- 
trading vessel to transport the provisions to the new 
colony, their design was balked by the unsuspecting 
governor granting them half a hundred row boats, too 
frail to go a mile from the coast. There seemed no 
other course but to seize a vessel by force and escape, 
but Benyowsky again played for time. The govern- 
or's daughter discovered his plot through her servant 
planning to follow one of the exiles to sea; but instead 
of betraying him to her Russian father, she promised 
to send him red clippings of thread as danger signals if 
the governor or his chancellor got wind of the treason. 

Their one aim was to get away from Asia before 
fresh orders could come overland from Yakutsk. Ice 
still blocked the harbor in April, but the St. Peter afjd 
Paul, the armed vessel that had brought the exiles 
across the sea from the mainland, lay in port and was 
already enlisting a crew for the summer voyage to 
America. The Pole sent twelve of his men to enlist 
among the crew, and nightly store provisions in the 
hold. The rest of the band were set to manufacturing 
cartridges, and buying or borrowing all the firearms 



ii8 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

they could obtain on the pretence of hunting. Word 
was secretly carried from man to man that, when a 
light was hoisted on the end of a flagstaff above the 
Benyowsky hut, all were to rally for the settlement 
across the ravine from the fort. 

The crisis came before the harbor had opened. 
Benyowsky was on a sled journey inland with the gov- 
ernor, when an exile came to him by night with word 
that one of the conspirators had lost his nerve and 
determined to save his own neck by confessing all to 
the governor. 

The traitor was even now hard on the trail to over- 
take the governor. Without a moment's wavering, 
Benyowsky sent the messenger with a flask of poisoned 
brandy back to meet the man. 

The Pole had scarcely returned to his hut in the 
exile village, when the governor's daughter came to 
him in tears. Ismyloff, a young Russian trader, who 
had all winter tried to join the conspirators as a spy, 
had been on the trail when the traitor was poisoned 
and was even now closeted with Governor Nilow. 

It was the night of April 23. No sooner had the 
daughter gone than the light was run up on the flag- 
staff, the bridge across the ravine broken down, arms 
dragged from hiding in the cellars, windows and doors 
barricaded, sentinels placed in hiding along the ditch 
between village and fort. For a whole day, no word 
came. Governor and chancellor were still busy ex- 
amining witnesses. In the morning came a maid 



THE POLISH PIRATE 119 

from the governor's daughter with a red thread of 
warning, and none too soon, for at ten o'clock, a Cos- 
sack sergeant brought a pohte invitation from the gov- 
ernor for the pleasure of M. Benyowsky's company 
at breakfast. 

M. Benyowsky returns polite regrets that he is 
slightly indisposed, but hopes to give himself the 
pleasure later. 

The sergeant winked his eyes and opined it was 
wiser to go by fair means than to be dragged by main 
force. 

The Pole advised the sergeant to make his will before 
repeating that threat. 

Noon saw two Cossacks and an officer thundering 
at the Pole's door. The door opened wide. In 
marched the soldiers, armed to the teeth; but before 
their clicking heels had ceased to mark time, the door 
was shut again. Benyowsky had whistled. A dozen 
exiles rose out of the floor. Cossacks and captors 
rolled in a heap. The soldiers were bound head to 
feet, and bundled into the cellar. Meanwhile the 
sentinels hidden in the ravine had captured Ismyloff, 
the nephew of the chancellor, and two other Russians, 
who were added to the captives in the cellar; and the 
governor changed his tactics. A letter was received 
from the governor's daughter pleading with her lover 
to come and be reconciled with her father, who had 
now no prejudice against the exiles; but in the letter 
were two or three tiny red threads such as might have 



I20 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

been pulled out of a dress sleeve. The letter had been 
written under force. 

Benyowsky's answer was to marshal his fifty-seven 
men in three divisions round the village; one round 
the house, the largest hidden in the dark on the fort 
side of the ravine, a decoy group stationed in the ditch 
to draw an attack. 

By midnight, the sentinels sent word that the main 
guard of Cossacks had reached the ravine. The de- 
coy had made a feint of resistance. The Cossacks 
sent back to the fort for reenforcements. The Pole 
waited only till nearly all the Cossacks were on the 
ditch bank, then instructing the little band of decoys 
to keep up a sham fight, poured his main forces through 
the dark, across the plain at a run, for the fort. Pali- 
sades were scaled, gates broken down, guards stabbed 
where they stood ! Benyowsky's men had the fort and 
the gates barricaded again before the governor could 
collect his senses. As Benyowsky entered the main 
rooms, the enraged commander seized a pistol, which 
missed fire, and sprang at the Pole's throat, roaring out 
he would see the exiles dead before he would surrender. 
The Pole, being lame, had swayed back under the 
onslaught, when the circular slash of a cutlass in the 
hand of an exile officer severed the governor's head 
from his body. 

Twenty-eight Cossacks were put to the sword inside 
the fort; but the exiles were not yet out of their troubleSo 
Though they had seized the armed vessel at once and 



THE POLISH PIRATE 121 

transferred to the hold the entire loot of the fort, — 
furs, silks, supplies, gold, — it would be two weeks 
before the ice would leave the port. Meanwhile the 
two hundred defeated Cossacks had retreated to a hill, 
and sent coureurs scurrying for help to the other forts 
of Kamchatka. Within two weeks seven hundred 
Cossacks would be on the hills; and the exiles, whose 
supplies were on board the vessel, would be cut off in 
the fort and starved into surrender. 

No time to waste, Benyowsky ! Not a woman or 
child was harmed, but every family in the fort was 
quickly rounded up in the chapel. Round this, out- 
side, were piled chairs, furniture, pitch, tar, powder, 
whale-oil. Promptly at nine in the morning, three 
women and twelve young girls — wives and daughters 
of the Cossack officers — were despatched to the Cos- 
sack besiegers on the hill with word that unless the 
Cossacks surrendered their arms to the exiles and sent 
down fifty soldiers as hostages of safety for the exiles 
till the ship could sail — precisely at ten o'clock the 
church would be set on fire. 

The women were seen to ascend the hill. No 
signal came from the Cossacks. At a quarter past 
nine Benyowsky kindled fires at each of the four 
angles of the church. As the flames began to mount 
a forest of handkerchiefs and white sheets waved 
above the hill, and a host of men came spurring to 
the fort with all the Cossacks' arms and fifty-two hos- 
tages. 



122 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

The exiles now togged themselves out in all the 
gay regimentals of the Russian officers. Salutes of 
triumph were fired from the cannon. A Te Deiim was 
sung. Feast and mad wassail filled both day and 
night till the harbor cleared. Even the Cossacks 
caught the madcap spirit of the escapade, and helped 
to load ammunition on the St. Peter and Paul. Nor 
were old wrongs forgiven. IsmylofF was bundled on 
the vessel in irons. The chancellor's secretary was 
seized and compelled to act as cook. Men, who had 
played the spy and tyrant, now felt the merciless 
knout. Witnesses, who had tried to pry into the exiles' 
plot, were hanged at the yard-arm. Nine women, 
relatives of exiles, who had been compelled to become 
the wives of Cossacks, now threw off the yoke of 
slavery, donned the costly Chinese silks, and joined 
the pirates. Among these was the governor's daughter, 
who was to have married a Cossack. 

On May ii, 1771, the Polish flag was run up on 
the St. Peter and Paul. The fort fired a God-speed — 
a heartily sincere one, no doubt — of twenty-one guns. 
Again the Te Deum was chanted; again, the oath of 
obedience taken by kissing Benyowsky's sword; and 
at five o'clock in the evening the ship dropped down 
the river for the sea, with ninety-six exiles on board, 
of whom nine were women; one, an archdeacon; 
half a dozen, officers of the imperial army; one, a 
gentleman in waiting to the Empress; at least a dozen, 
convicts of the blackest dye. 



THE POLISH PIRATE 123 

The rest of Benyowsky's adventures read more like 
a page from some pirate romance than sober record of 
events on the w^est coast of America. Barely had the 
vessel rounded the southern cape of the peninsula into 
the Pacific, when Ismyloff, the young Russian trader, 
v^ho had been carried on board in irons, rallied round 
Benyowsky such a clamor of mutineers, duels v^ere 
fought on the quarter-deck, the malcontents clapped in 
handcuffs again, and the ringleaders tied to the masts, 
where knouting enough was laid on to make them sue 
for peace. 

The middle of May saw the vessel anchoring on the 
west coast of Bering Island, where a sharp lookout was 
kept for Russian fur traders, and armed men must go 
ashore to reconnoitre before Benyowsky dared venture 
from the ship. The Pole's position was chancy 
enough to satisfy even his melodramatic soul. Apart 
from four or five Swedes, the entire crew of ninety-six 
was Russian. Benyowsky was for sailing south at 
once to take up quarters on some South Sea island, or 
to claim the protection of some European power. The 
Russian exiles, of whom half were criminals, were for 
coasting the Pacific on pirate venture, and compelled 
the Pole to steer his vessel for the fur hunters' islands 
of Alaska. 

The men sent to reconnoitre Bering Island came 
back with word that while they were gathering drift- 
wood on the south shore, they had heard shots and 
met five Russians belonging to a Saxon exile, who had 



124 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

turned fur hunter, deposed the master of his ships, 
gathered one hundred exiles around him, and become 
a trader on his own account. The Saxon requested 
an interview with Benyowsky. What was the Pole to 
do ? Was this a decoy to test his strength ? Was the 
Saxon planning to scuttle the Pole's vessel, too ? Be- 
nyowsky's answer was that he would be pleased to meet 
his Saxon comrade in arms on the south shore, each 
side to approach with four men only, laying down 
arms instantly on sight of each other. The two exile 
pirates met. Each side laid down arms as agreed. 
Ochotyn, the Saxon, was a man of thirty-six years, 
who had come an exile on fur trading vessels, gathered 
a crew of one hundred and thirty-four around him, 
and, like the Pole, become a pirate. His plan in meet- 
ing Benyowsky was to propose vengeance on Russia : 
let the two ships unite, go back to Siberia, and sack 
the Russian ports on the Pacific. But the Pole had 
had enough of Russia. He contented himself with 
presenting his brother pirate with one hundred pounds 
of ammunition; and the two exiles sat round a camp- 
fire of driftwood far into the night, spinning yarns of 
blasted hopes back in Europe, and desperate venture 
here on the Pacific. The Saxon's headquarters were 
on Kadiak, where he had formed alliance with the 
Indians. Hither he advised the Pole to sail for a 
cargo of furs. 

Ismylofi^, the mutineer, was marooned on Bering 
Island. Ice-drift had seemed to bar the way north- 



THE POLISH PIRATE 



125 



ward through Bering Straits. June saw Benyowsky 
far eastward at Kadiak on the south shore of Alaska, 
gathering in a cargo of furs; and from the sea-otter 
fields of Kadiak and Oonalaska, Benyowsky sailed 
southwest, past the smoking volcanoes of the Aleu- 
tians, vaguely heading for some of those South Sea 
islands of which he used to read in the exile village of 
Kamchatka. 

Not a man of the crew knew as much about 
navigation as a schoolboy. They had no idea where 
they were going, or where the ship was. As day 
after day slipped past with no sight but the heaving 
sea, the Russian landsmen became restive. Provi- 
sions had dwindled to one fish a day; and scarcely a 
pint of water for each man was left in the hold. In 
flying from Siberian exile, were they courting a worse 
fate ^ Stephanow, the criminal convict, who had 
crossed Siberia with the Pole, dashed on deck demand- 
ing a better allowance of water as the ship entered 
warmer and warmer zones. The next thing the Pole 
knew, Stephanow had burst open the barrel hoops of 
the water kegs to quench his thirst. By the time the 
guard had gone down the main hatch to intercept him, 
Stephanow and a band of Russian mutineers had 
trundled the brandy casks to the deck and were in a 
wild debauch. The main hatch was clapped down, 
leaving the mutineers in possession of the deck, till 
all fell in drunken torpor, when Benyowsky rushed 
his soldiers up the fore scuttle, snapped handcuff^s on 



126 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

the rebels, and tied them to the masts. In the midst 
of this disorder, such a hurricane broke over the ocean 
that the tossing yard-arms alternately touched water. 

To be sure, Benyowsky had escaped exile; but his 
ship was a hornets' nest. After the storm all hands 
were busy sewing new sails. The old sails were dis- 
tributed as trousers for the ragamuffin crew. For ten 
days no food was tasted but soup made from sea- 
otter skins. Then birds were seen, and seaweed 
drifted past the vessel; and a wild hope mounted 
every heart of reaching some part of Japan. 

On sunset of July 15, the Pole's watch-dog was 
noticed standing at the bow, sniffing and barking. 
Two or three of the ship's hands dashed up to the 
masthead, vowing they would not come down till 
they saw land. Suddenly the lookout shouted. 
Land ! The exiles forgot their woes. Even the muti- 
neers tied to the masts cheered. Darker and darker 
grew the cloud on the horizon. By daybreak the 
cloud had resolved itself to a shore before the eager 
eyes of the watching crew. The ship had scarcely 
anchored before every man was overboard in a wild 
rush for the fresh water to be found on land. Tents 
were pitched on the island; and the wanderers of the 
sea rested. 

It is no part of this narrative to tell of Benyowsky's 
adventures on Luzon of the Philippines, or the La- 
drones, — whichever it was, — how he scuttled Japan- 



THE POLISH PIRATE 127 

ese sampans of gold and pearls, fought a campaign 
in Formosa, and wound up at Macao, China, where 
all the rich cargo of sea-otter brought from America 
was found to be water rotted; and Stephanow, the 
criminal convict, left the Pole destitute by stealing and 
selling all the Japanese loot. 

This part of the story does not concern America; and 
the Pole's whole life has been told by Jokai, the Hun- 
garian novelist, and Kotzebue, the Russian dramatist. 

Benyowsky got passage to Europe from China on 
one of the East India Company ships, whose captain 
was uneasy enough at having so many pirates on board. 
In France he obtained an appointment to look after 
French forts in Madagascar; but this was too tame an 
undertaking for the adventure-loving Pole. He threw 
up his appointment, returned to Europe, interested 
English merchants in a new venture, sailed to Balti- 
more in the Robert Anne of twenty cannon and four 
hundred and fifty tons, interested merchants there in 
his schemes, and departed from Baltimore October 25, 
1784, to conquer Madagascar and set up an indepen- 
dent commercial government. Here he was slain by 
the French troops on the 23d of May, 1786 — to the 
ruin of those Baltimore and London merchants who 
had advanced him capital. His own account of his 
adventures is full of gross exaggerations ; but even the 
Russians were so impressed with the prowess of his 
valor that a few years later, when Cook sailed to Alaska, 
IsmylofF could not be brought to mention his name; 



128 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

and when the English ships went on to Kamchatka, 
they found the inhabitants hidden in the cellars, for 
fear the Polish pirate had returned. But like many 
heroes of misfortune, Benyowsky could not stand suc- 
cess. It turned his head. He entered Macao with 
the airs of an emperor, that at once discredited him 
with the solid people. If he had returned to the west 
coast of America, as a fur trader, he might have 
wrested more honors from Russia ; but his scheme to 
capture an island of which he was to be king, ended in 
ruin for himself and his friends.^ 



1 It may as well be acknowledged that Mauritius Augustus, Count Benyowsky 
(pronounced by himself Be-nyov-sky), is a liar without a peer among the adventurers 
of early American history. If it were not that his life was known to the famous 
men of his time, his entire memoirs from 1 741 to 1 771 might be rejected as fiction 
of the yellow order ; but the comical thing is, the mendacious fellow cut a tremen- 
dous swath in his day. The garrisons of Kamchatka trembled at his name twenty-five 
years after his escapades. IsmylofF, who became a famous trader in the Russian Fur 
Company, could not be induced to open his mouth about the Pole to Cook, and actually 
made use of the universal fear of Benyowsky among Russians, to keep Cook from 
learning Russian fur trade secrets, when the Englishman went to Kamchatka, by repre- 
senting that Cook was a pirate, too. The Gentleman s Magazine for June, 1772, 
contained a letter from Canton, dated November 19, I 771, giving a fiill account of the 
pirate's arrival there with his mutineers and women refugees. The Bishop Le Bon 
of Macao writes, September 24, 1 771 : "Out of his equipage, there remain no more 
than eight men in health. All the rest are confined to their beds. For two months 
they suffered hunger and thirst." Captain King of Cook's staff writes of Kamchatka : 
" We were informed that an exiled Polish officer named Beniowski had seized upon a 
galliott, lying at the entrance of the harbor, and had forced on board a number of 
Russian sailors, sufficient to navigate her 5 that he had put on shore a part of the 
crew . . . among the rest, Ismyloff." In Paris he met and interested Benjamin 
Franklin. Hyacinth de Magellan, a descendant of the great discoverer, advanced 
Benyowsky money for the Madagascar filibustering expedition. So did certain mer- 
chants of Baltimore in 1785. On leaving England, Benyowsky gave his memoirs to 
Magellan, who passed their editing over to William Nicholson of the Royal Society, by 



THE POLISH PIRATE 



129 



whom they were given to the world in 1790. German, French, and Russian transla- 
tions followed. This called forth Russia's account of the matter, written by Ivan 
Ryumin, edited by Berg, St. Petersburg, 1822. These accounts, with the facts as cited 
from contemporaries, enable one to check the preposterous exaggerations of the Pole. 
Of late years, between drama and novels, quite a Benyowsky literature has sprung up about 
this Cagliostro of the sea. His record in the continental armies preceding his exile 
would fill a book by itself; and throughout all, Benyowsky appears in the same light, 
an unscrupulous braggart lying gloriously, but withal as courageous as he was mendacious. 



PART II 

AMERICAN AND ENGLISH ADVENTURERS ON THE 
WEST COAST OF AMERICA — FRANCIS DRAKE 
IN CALIFORNIA — COOK, FROM BRITISH CO- 
LUMBIA TO ALASKA — LEDYARD, THE FORE- 
RUNNER OF LEWIS AND CLARK — GRAY, THE 
DISCOVERER OF THE COLUMBIA — VANCOUVER, 
THE LAST OF THE WEST COAST NAVIGATORS 



CHAPTER VI 

1562-1595 

FRANCIS DRAKE IN CALIFORNIA 

How the Sea Rover was attacked and ruined as a Boy on the 
Spanish Main off Mexico — His Revenge in sacking Spanish Treas- 
ure Houses and crossing Panama — The Richest Man in England, 
he sails to the Forbidden Sea, scuttles all the Spanish Ports up the 
West Coast of South America and takes Possession of New Albion 
(California) for England 

If a region were discovered where gold was valued 
less than cartloads of clay, and ropes of pearls could be 
obtained in barter for strings of glass beads, the 
modern mind would have some idea of the frenzy that 
prevailed in Spain after the discovery of America by 
Columbus. Native temples were found in Chile, in 
Peru, in Central America, in Mexico, where gold 
literally lined the walls, silver paved the floors, and 
handfuls of pearls were as thoughtlessly thrown in 
the laps of the conquerors as shells might be tossed at 
a modern clam-bake. 

Within half a century from the time Spain first 
learned of America, Cortes not only penetrated Mex- 
ico, but sent his corsairs up the west coast of the con- 

133 



134 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

tinent. Pizarro conquered Peru. Spanish ships plied 
a trade rich beyond dreams of avarice between the 
gold realms of Peru and the spice islands of the Philip- 
pines. The chivalry of the Spanish nobility suddenly 
became a chivalry of the high seas. Religious zeal 
burned to a flame against those gold-lined pagan 
temples. It was easy to believe that the transfer of 
wedges of pure gold from heathen hands to Spain 
was a veritable despoiling of the devil's treasure boxes, 
glorious in the sight of God. The trackless sea be- 
came the path to fortune. Balboa had deeper motives 
than loyalty, when, in 15 13, on his march across Panama 
and discovery of the Pacific, he rushed mid-deep into 
the water, shouting out in swelling words that he 
took possession of earth, air, and water for Spain "for 
all time, past, present, or to come, without contradic- 
tion, . . . north and south, with all the seas from the 
Pole Arctic to the Pole Antarctic, . . . both now, and 
as long as the world endures, until the final day of 
judgment." ^ 

Shorn of noise, the motive was simply to shut out 
the rest of the world from Spain's treasure box. The 
Monroe Doctrine was not yet born. The whole Pacific 
was to be a closed sea! To be sure, Vasco da Gama 
had found the way round the Cape of Good Hope to 
the Indian Ocean; and Magellan soon after passed 
through the strait of his name below South America 

^ This is but a brief epitome of the Spaniard's swelling words. Only the Heavens 
above were omitted from Spain's claim. 




Sir John Hawkins. 



FRANCIS DRAKE IN CALIFORNIA 135 

right into the Pacific Ocean; but round the world by 
the Indian Ocean was a far cry for tiny craft of a few 
hundred tons; and the Straits of Magellan were so 
storm-bound, it soon became a common saying that 
they were a closed door. Spain sent her sailors across 
Panama to build ships for the Pacific. The sea that 
bore her treasure craft — millions upon millions of 
pounds sterling in pure gold, silver, emeralds, pearls 
— was as closed to the rest of the world as if walled 
round with only one chain-gate; and that at Panama, 
where Spain kept the key. 

That is, the sea ivas shut till Drake came coursing 
round the world; and his coming was so utterly im- 
possible to the Spanish mind that half the treasure 
ships scuttled by the English pirate mistook him for a 
visiting Spaniard till the rallying cry, "God and Saint 
George!" wakened them from their dream. 

It was by accident the English first found themselves 
in the waters of the Spanish Main. John Hawkins 
had been cruising the West Indies exchanging slaves 
for gold, when an ominous stillness fell on the sea. 
The palm trees took on the hard glister of metal leaves. 
The sunless sky turned yellow, the sea to brass; and 
before the six English ships could find shelter, a hur- 
ricane broke that flailed the fleet under sails torn to 
tatters clear across the Gulf of Mexico to Vera Cruz, 
the stronghold of Spanish power. 

But Hawkins feared neither man nor devil. He 



136 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

reefed his storm-torn sails, had the stoppers pulled out 
of his cannon in readiness, his gunners alert, ran up 
the English ensign, and boldly towed his fleet into port 
directly under Spanish guns. Sending a messenger 
ashore, he explained that he was sorry to intrude on 
forbidden waters, but that he needed to careen his 
ships for the repair of leakages, and now asked per- 
mission from the viceroy to refit. Perhaps, in his 
heart, the English adventurer wasn't sorry to get an 
inner glimpse of Mexico's defences. As he waited for 
permission, there sailed into the harbor the Spanish 
fleet itself, twelve merchantmen rigged as frigates, 
loaded with treasure to the value of one million eight 
hundred thousand pounds. The viceroy of Mexico, 
Don Martin Henriquez himself, commanded the fleet. 
English and Spanish ships dipped colors to each other 
as courteous hidalgoes might have doff"ed hats; and 
the guns roared each other salutes, that set the seas 
churning. Master John Hawkins quaffed mug after 
mug of foaming beer with a boisterous boast that if 
the Spaniards thought to frighten him with a waste of 
powder and smoke, he could play the same game, and 
"singe the don's beard." 

Came a messenger, then, clad in mail to his teeth, very 
pompous, very gracious, very profuse of welcome, with 
a guarantee in writing from the viceroy of security for 
Hawkins while dismantling the English ships. In 
order to avoid clashes among the common soldiers, the 
fortified island was assigned for the English to disem- 



FRANCIS DRAKE IN CALIFORNIA 137 

bark. It was the I2th of August, 1568. Darkness 
fell with the warm velvet caress of a tropic sea. Half 
the crew had landed, half the cannon been trundled 
ashore for the vessels to be beached next day, when 
Hawkins noticed torches — a thousand torches — ■ 
glistening above the mailed armor of a thousand Span- 
ish soldiers marching down from the fort and being 
swiftly transferred to the frigates. A blare of Spanish 
trumpets blew to arms ! The waters were suddenly 
alight with the flare of five fire-rafts drifting straight 
where the disarmed English fleet lay moored. Haw- 
kins had just called his page to hand round mugs of 
beer, when a cannon-shot splintering through the mast 
arms overhead ripped the tankard out of his hand.^ 

"God and Saint George," thundered the enraged 
Englishman, "down with the traitorous devils!" 

No time to save sailors ashore ! The blazing rafts had 
already bumped keels with the moored fleet. No chance 
to raise anchors ! The Spanish frigates were already 
abreast in a life-and-death grapple, soldiers boarding 
the English decks, sabring the crews, hurling hand 
grenades down the hatches to blow up the powder 
magazines. Hawkins roared "to cut the cables." It 
was a hand-to-hand slaughter on decks slippery with 
blood. No light but the musketry fire and glare of 
burning masts ! The little English company were 
fighting like a wild beast trapped, when with a thunder- 

1 The exact position of the English towards the port is hard to give ; as the site of 
Vera Cruz has been changed three times. 



138 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

clap that tore bottom out of hull — Hawkins's ship 
flew into mid-air, a flaring, fiery wreck — then sank 
in the heaving trough of the sea, carrying down five 
hundred Spaniards to a watery grave. Cutlass in 
hand, head over heels went Hawkins into the sea. 
The hell of smoke, of flaming mast poles, of blazing 
musketry, of churning waters — hid him. Then a 
rope's end flung out by some friend gave handhold. 
He was up the sides of a ship, that had cut hawsers 
and off before the fire-rafts came ! Sails were hoisted 
to the seaward breeze. In the carnage of fire and 
blood, the Spaniards did not see the two smallest 
English vessels scudding before the wind as if fiend- 
chased. Every light on the decks was put out. Then 
the dark of the tropic night hid them. Without food, 
without arms, with scarcely a remnant of their crews 
— the two ships drifted to sea. 

Not a man of the sailors ashore escaped. All were 
butchered, or taken prisoners for a fate worse than 
butchery — to be torn apart in the market-place of 
Vera Cruz, baited in the streets to the yells of on- 
lookers, hung by the arms to out-of-doors scaff'olding 
to die by inches, or be torn by vultures. The two 
ships at sea were in terrible plight. North, west, south 
was the Spanish foe. Food there was none. The 
crews ate the dogs, monkeys, parrots on board. Then 
they set traps for the rats of the hold. The starving 
seamen begged to be marooned. They would risk 
Spanish cruelty to escape starvation. Hawkins landed 



FRANCIS DRAKE IN CALIFORNIA 139 

three-quarters of the remnant crews either in Yuca- 
tan or Florida. Then he crept lamely back to Eng- 
land, where he moored in January, 1569. 

Of the six splendid ships that had spread their 
sails from Plymouth, only the Mtnion and Judith 
came back; and those two had been under command 
of a thick-set, stocky, red-haired English boy about 
twenty-four years of age — Francis Drake of Devon, 
one of twelve sons of a poor clergyman, who eked out 
a living by reading prayers for the Queen's Navy 
Sundays, playing sailor week days. Francis, the eld- 
est son, was born in the hull of an old vessel where the 
family had taken refuge in time of religious persecu- 
tion. In spite of his humble origin. Sir Francis Rus- 
sell had stood his godfather at baptism. The Earl 
of Bedford had been his patron. John Hawkins, a 
relative, supplied money for his education. Appren- 
ticed before the mast from his twelfth year, Drake 
became purser to Biscay at eighteen; and so faithfully 
had he worked his way, when the master of the sloop 
died, it was bequeathed to young Drake. Emulous 
of becoming a great sailor like Hawkins, Drake sold 
the sloop and invested everything he owned in Haw- 
kins's venture to the West Indies. He was ruined to 
his last penny by Spanish treachery. It was almost 
a rehglon for England to hate Spain at that time. 
Drake hated tenfold more now. Spain had taught 
the world to keep off her treasure box. Would Drake 
accept the lesson, or challenge it ? 



I40 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

Men who master destiny rise, like the Phenix, from 
the ashes of their own ruin. In the language of the 
street, when they fall — these men of destiny — they 
make a point of falling upstaWs. Amid the ruin of 
massacre in Mexico, Drake brought away one fact — 
memory of Spanish gold to the value of one million 
eight hundred thousand pounds. Where did it come 
from ? Was the secret of that gold the true reason for 
Spain's resentment against all intruders .? Drake had 
coasted Florida and the West Indies. He knew they 
yielded no such harvest. Then it must come from one 
of three other regions — South America, Central 
America, Mexico. 

For two years Drake prospected for the sources of 
that golden wealth. In the Dragon and Swan, he 
cruised the Spanish Main during 1570. In 1571 he was 
out again in the Swan. By 1572 he knew the secret 
of that gold — gold in ship-loads, in caravans of one 
thousand mules, in masses that filled from cellar to 
attic of the King's Treasure House, where tribute of 
one-fifth was collected for royalty. It came from the 
subjugated Kingdom of Peru, by boat up the Pacific 
to the Port of Panama, by pack-train across the isthmus 
— mountainous, rugged, forests of mangroves tangled 
with vines, bogs that were bottomless — to Nombre de 
Dios, the Spanish fort on the Atlantic side, which had 
become the storehouse of all New Spain. Drake took 
counsel of no one. 

Next year he was back on the Spanish Main, in the 



FRANCIS DRAKE IN CALIFORNIA 141 

Pacha, forty-seven men; his brother John commanding 
the Swan with twenty-six of a crew, only one man older 
than fifty, the rest mere boys with hate in their hearts 
for Spanish blood, love in their hearts for Spanish gold. 
Touching at a hidden cove for provisions left the year 
before, Drake found this warning from a former com- 
rade, stuck to the bark of a tree by a hunting knife : — 

^'Captain Dfake — if you do fortune into this port, 
haste away; for the Spaniards have betrayed this place, 
and taken all away that you left here — your loving 
friend — "John Garret.'^ 

Heeding the warning, Drake hastened away to the 
Isle of Pinos, off the isthmus, left the ships at a con- 
cealed cove here, armed fifty-three of his boldest fellows 
with muskets, crossbows, pikes, and spontoons. Then 
he called for drummers and trumpeters, and rowed in a 
small boat for Nombre de Dios, the treasure house of 
New Spain. The small boat kept on the offing till 
dark, then sent ashore for some Indians — half-breeds 
whom Spanish cruelty had driven to revolt. This in- 
creased Drake's force to one hundred and fifty men. 
Silently, just as the moon emerged from clouds light- 
ing up harbor and town, the long-boat glided into 
Nombre de Dios. A high platform, mounted with 
brass cannon, fronted the water. Behind were thirty 
houses, thatch-roofed, whitewashed, palisaded, sur- 
rounded by courtyards with an almost European pomp. 
The King's Treasure House stood at one end of the mar- 
ket. Near it was a chapel with high wooden steeple. 



142 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

A Spanish ship lay furled in port. From this 
glided out a punt poled like mad by a Spaniard racing 
to reach the platform first. Drake got athwart the 
fellow's path, knocked him over, gagged his yells, and 
was up the platform before the sleepy gunner on guard 
was well awake. The sentry only paused to make sure 
that the men scrambling up the fort were not ghosts. 
Then he tore at the top of his speed for the alarm-bell 
of the chapel and, clapping down the hatch door of the 
steeple stairs in the faces of the pursuing Englishmen, 
rang the bells like a demon possessed. 

Leaving twelve men to hold the platform as a retreat, 
Drake sent sixteen to attack the King's Treasure just 
at the moment he himself, with his hundred men, 
should succeed in drawing the entire Spanish garrison 
to a sham battle on the market-place. The cannon on 
the platform were spiked and overturned. Drums 
beating, trumpets blowing, torches aflare, the English 
freebooter marched straight to the market. Up at the 
Treasure House, John Drake and Oxenham had burst 
open the doors of the store-room just as the saddled 
mules came galloping to carry the booty beyond danger. 
A lighted candle on the cellar stair showed silver piled 
bar on bar to the value of one million pounds. Down 
on the market, the English trumpeter lay dead. Drake 
had fallen from a sword slash and, snatched up by com- 
rades, the wound stanched by a scarf, was carried back 
to the boat, where the raiders made good their escape, 
richer by a million pounds with the loss of only one man. 



FRANCIS DRAKE IN CALIFORNIA 143 

Drake cruised the Spanish Main for six more months. 
From the Indians he learned that the mule trains with 
the yearly output of Peruvian gold would leave the 
Pacific in midwinter to cross overland to Nombre de 
Dios. No use trying to raid the fort again ! Spain 
would not be caught napping a second time. But 
Pedro, a Panama Indian, had volunteered to guide a 
small band of lightly equipped English inland behind 
Nombre de Dios, to the halfway house where the gold 
caravans stopped. The audacity of the project is un- 
paralleled. Eighteen boys led by a man not yet in his 
thirtieth year accompanied by Indians were to invade a 
tangled thicket of hostile country, cut off from retreat, 
the forts of the enemy — the crudest enemy in Christen- 
dom — on each side, no provisions but what each car- 
ried in his haversack ! 

Led by the Indian Pedro, the freebooters struck 
across country, picked up the trail behind Nombre de 
Dios, marched by night, hid by day, Indian scouts 
sending back word when a Spaniard was seen, the 
English scudding to ambush in the tangled woods. 
Twelve days and nights they marched. At ten in 
the morning of February 11, they were on the Great 
Divide. Pedro led Drake to the top of the hill. Up 
the trunk of an enormous tree, the Indians had cut 
steps to a kind of bower, or lookout. Up clambered 
Francis Drake. Then he looked westward. 

Mountains, hills, forested valleys, rolled from his 
feet westward. Beyond — what ? The shining ex- 



144 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

panse of the fabled South Sea ! The Pacific silver in 
the morning light ! A New World of Waters, where 
the sun's track seemed to pave a new path, a path of 
gold, to the mystic Orient ! Never before had English 
eyes seen these waters ! Never yet English prow cut 
these waves ! Where did they lead — the endlessly 
rolling billows ? For Drake, they seemed to lead to a 
New World of Dreams — dreams of gold, of glory, of 
immortal fame. He came down from the lookout so 
overcome with a great inspiration that he could not 
speak. Then, as with Balboa, the fire of a splendid 
enthusiasm lighted up the mean purposes of the ad- 
venturer to a higher manhood. Before his followers, 
he fell on his knees and prayed Almighty God to grant 
him the supreme honor of sailing an English ship on 
that sea ! 

That night the Indian came back with word that the 
mule train laden with gold was close on the trail. 
Drake scattered his men on each side of the road flat 
on their faces in high grass. Wealth was almost in their 
grasp. Hope beat riotous in the young bloods. No 
sound but the whir of wings as great tropic insects 
flitted through the dark with flashes of fire ; or the clank 
of a soldier unstrapping haversack to steel courage by 
a drink of grog ! An hour passed ! Two hours before 
the eager ears pressed to earth detected a padded hoof- 
beat over grass. Then a bell tinkled, as the leader of 
the pack came in sight. Drunk with the glory of the 
day, or too much grog, some fool sailor leaped in mid- 



FRANCIS DRAKE IN CALIFORNIA 145 

air with an exultant yell ! In a second the mule train 
had stampeded. 

By the time Drake came to the halfway house/ 
the gold was hidden in the woods, and the Spaniards 
fleeing for their lives; though an old chronicle declares 
"the general" went from house to house assuring the 
Spanish ladies they were safe. The Spaniards of 
Tierra Firme were simply paralyzed with fright at the 
apparition of pirates in the centre of the kingdom. 
Then scouts brought word of double danger: on the 
Atlantic side, Spanish frigates were searching for 
Drake's ships; from the Pacific, two hundred horse- 
men were advancing in hot pursuit. Between the two 
— was he trapped } — Not he ! Overland went a 
scout to the ships — Drake's own gold toothpick as 
token — bidding them keep offshore; he would find 
means to come out to them. Then he retreated over 
the trail at lightning pace, sleeping only in ambush, 
eating in snatches, coming out on the coast far distant 
from Nombre de Dios and Spanish frigates. Binding 
driftwood into a raft, Drake hoisted sail of flour sacks. 
Saying good-by to the Indian, the freebooter noticed 
Pedro's eyes wander to the gold-embossed Turkish 
cimeter in his own hand, and at once presented scab- 
bard and blade to the astonished savage. In gratitude 
the Indian tossed three wedges of gold to the raft now 
sheering out with the tide to sea. These Drake gave 

1 This halfway station was known as Venta Cruz. Seven of the traders lost their 
lives in Drake's attack. 



146 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

to his men. Six hours the raft was drifting to the sails 
on the offing, and such seas were slopping across the 
water-logged driftwood, the men were to their waists 
in water when the sail-boats came to the rescue. 

On Sunday morning, August 9, 1573, the ships were 
once more in Plymouth. Whispers ran through the 
assembled congregations of the churches that Drake, 
the bold sea-rover, was entering port loaded with 
foreign treasure; and out rushed every man, woman, 
and child, leaving the scandalized preachers thunder- 
ing to empty pews. 

Drake was now one of the richest men in England. 
At his own cost he equipped three frigates for service 
under Essex in Ireland, and through the young Earl 
was introduced to the circle of Elizabeth's advisers. 
To the Queen he told his plans for sailing an English 
ship on the South Sea. To her, no doubt, he related 
the tales of Spanish gold freighting that sea, closed to 
the rest of the world. Good reason for England — 
Spain's enemy — to prove that the ocean, like air, was 
free to all nations ! The Pope's Bull dividing off the 
southern hemisphere between Portugal and Spain 
mattered little to a nation belligerently Protestant, and 
less to a seaman whose dauntless daring had raised 
him from a wharf-rat to Queen's adviser. Elizabeth 
could not yet wound Spain openly; but she received 
Drake in audience, and presented him a magnificent 
sword with the w^ords — "Who striketh thee, Drake, 
strikcth us !" 




Q 



O 



FRANCIS DRAKE IN CALIFORNIA 147 

Five ships, this time, he led out from Plymouth in 
November of 1577. Gales drove him back. It was 
December before his fleet was at sea — the Pelican of 
one hundred tons and twenty or thirty cannon under 
Drake, Thomas Doughty, a courtier second to Drake, 
the Elizabeth of eighty tons, the Swan, Christopher, 
and Marygold no larger than fishing schooners ; manned 
in all by one hundred and sixty sailors, mostly boys. 

Outward bound for trade in Egypt, the world was 
told, but as merchantmen, the ships were regally 
equipped — Drake in velvets and gold braid, served 
by ten young gentlemen of noble birth, who never sat 
or covered in his presence without permission; service 
of gold plate at the mess table, where Drake dined 
alone like a king to the music of viols and harps; mili- 
tary drill at every port, and provisions enough aboard 
to go round the world, not just to Egypt. 

January saw the fleet far enough from Egypt, at the 
islands off" the west coast of Africa, where three vessels 
were scuttled, the crews all put ashore but one Portu- 
guese pilot carried along to Brazil as guide. Thomas 
Doughty now fell in disfavor by openly acting as equal 
in command with Drake. Not in Egypt, but at Port 
St. Julian — a southern harbor of South America — 
anchored Drake's fleet. The scaff^old where Magellan 
had executed mutineers half a century before still stood 
in the sands. 

The Christopher had already been sent adrift as use- 
less. The Szvan was now broken up as unseaworthy, 



148 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

leaving only the Pelican^ the Elizabeth, and the Mary- 
gold. One thing more remained to be done — the 
greatest blot across the glory of Drake. Doughty was 
defiant, a party growing in his favor. When sent as 
prisoner to the Marygold, he had angered every man of 
the crew by high-handed authority. Drake dared not 
go on to unknow^n, hostile seas with a mutiny, or the 
chance of a mutiny brewing. Whether justly or un- 
justly. Doughty was tried at Port St. Julian under the 
shadow of Magellan's old scaffold, for disrespect to 
his commander and mutiny; and was pronounced 
guilty by a jury of twelve. A council of forty voted 
his death. The witnesses had contradicted themselves 
as if in terror of Drake's displeasure; and some plainly 
pleaded that the jealous crew of the Marygold were 
doing an innocent gentleman to death. The one thing 
Drake would not do, was carry the trouble maker 
along on the voyage. Like dominant spirits world 
over, he did not permit a life more or less to obstruct 
his purpose. He granted Doughty a choice of fates — 
to be marooned in Patagonia, or suffer death on the 
spot. Protesting his innocence, Doughty spurned 
the least favor from his rival. He refused the choice. 

Solemnly the two, accuser and accused, took Holy 
Communion together. Solemnly each called on God 
as w^itness to the truth. A day each spent in prayer, 
these pirate fellows, who mixed their religion with their 
robbery, perhaps using piety as sugar-coating for 
their ill-deeds. Then they dined together in the 



FRANCIS DRAKE IN CALIFORNIA 149 

commander's tent, — Fletcher, the horrified chaplain, 
looking on, — drank hilariously to each other's healths, 
to each other's voyage whatever the end might be, 
looked each in the eye of the other without quailing, 
talking nonchalantly, never flinching courage nor balk- 
ing at the grim shadow of their own stubborn temper. 
Doughty then rose to his feet, drank his last bumper, 
thanked Drake graciously for former kindness, walked 
calmly out to the old scaffold, laid his head on the 
block, and suffered death. Horror fell on the crew. 
Even Drake was shaken from his wonted calm ; for he 
sat apart, his velvet cloak thrown back, slapping his 
crossed knees, and railing at the defenders of the dead 
man.^ To rouse the men, he had solemn service held 
for the crew, and for the first time revealed to them his 
project for the voyage on the Pacific. After painting 
the glories of a campaign against Spanish ports of the 
South Seas, he wound up an inspiriting address with 
the rousing assurance that after this voyage, ^'the 
worst boy aboard would never nede to goe agayne to sea, 
but be able to lyve in England like a right good gentle- 
man.'^ Fletcher, the chaplain, who secretly advocated 
the dead man's cause, was tied to a mast pole in bilboes, 
with the inscription hung to his neck — "Falsest knave 
that liveth." 

On August 17 they departed from "the port ac- 

1 The Hakluyt Society Proceedings, 1 8 54, give all details of this terrible crime. 
Fletcher, the chaplain, thought Doughty innocent ; but Drake considered the chaplain 
" the falsest knave that liveth." 



I50 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

cursed," for the Straits of Magellan, that were to lead 
to Spanish wealth on the Pacific.^ 

The superstitious crews' fears of disaster for the 
death of Doughty seemed to become very real in the 
terrific tempests that assailed the three ships as they 
entered the straits. Gales lashed the cross tides to a 
height of thirty feet, threatening to swamp the little 
craft. Mountains emerged shadowy through the mists 
on the south. Roiling waters met the prows from end 
to end of the straits. Topsails were dipped, psalms 
of thanks chanted, and prayers held as the ships came 
out on the. west side into the Pacific on the 6th of Sep- 
tember. In honor of the first English vessel to enter 
this ocean, Drake renamed his ship "Golden Hind." 

1 Don Francisco de Zarate, commander of a Spanish ship scuttled by Drake off 
Guatalco, gives this description to the Spanish government of the Englishman's equi- 
page : " The general of the Englishmen is the same who five years ago took Nombre 
de Dios, about thirty-five years old, short, with a ruddy beard, one of the greatest mari- 
ners there are on the sea, alike for his skill and power of command. His ship is a 
galleon of four hundred tons, a very fast sailer, and there are aboard her, one hundred 
men, all skilled hands and of warlike age, and all so well trained that they might be old 
soldiers — they keep their harquebusses clean. He treats them with affection, they him 
with respect. He carries with him nine or ten gentlemen cadets of high families in 
England. These are his council. He calls them together, tho' he takes counsel of no 
one. He has no favorite. These are admitted to his table, as well as a Portuguese 
pilot whom he brought from England. (?) He is served with much plate with gilt 
borders engraved with his arms and has all possible kinds of delicacies and scents, which 
. . . the Queen gave him. (?) None of the gentlemen sit or cover in his presence 
without first being ordered once or even several times. The galleon carries thirty pieces 
of heavy ordnance, fireworks and ammunition. They dine and sup to the music of 
violins. He carries carpenters, caulkers, careeners. The ship is sheathed. The men 
are paid and not regular pirates. No one takes plunder and the slightest fault is pun- 
ished." The don goes on to say that what troubled him most was that Drake captured 
Spanish charts of the Pacific, which would guide other intruders on the Pacific. 



FRANCIS DRAKE IN CALIFORNIA 151 

The gales continued so furiously, Drake jocosely 
called the sea, Mare Furiosum, instead of Pacific. The 
first week of October storms compelled the vessels to 
anchor. In the raging darkness that night, the ex- 
plosive rip of a snapping hawser was heard behind the 




The Golden Hind. 

stern of the Golden Hind. Fearful cries rose from the 
waves for help. The dark form of a phantom ship 
lurched past in the running seas — the Marygold 
adrift, loose from her anchor, driving to the open storm; 
fearful judgment — as the listeners thought — for the 
crew's false testimony against Doughty; for, as one 
old record states, "they could by no means help spoom- 



152 



VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 



ing along before the sea;" and the MarygoUw2LS never 
more seen. 

Meanwhile like disaster had befallen the Golden 
Hind, the cable snapping weak as thread against the 
drive of tide and wind. Only the Elizabeth kept her 
anchor grip, and her crew became so panic-stricken, 
they only waited till the storm abated, then turned 
back through the straits, swift heels to the stormy, ill- 
fated sea, and steered straight for England, where they 
moored in June. Towed by the Golden Hind, now 
driving southward before the tempest, was a jolly-boat 
with eight men. The mountain seas finally wrenched 
the tow-rope from the big ship, and the men were adrift 
in the open boat. Their fortunes are a story in itself. 
Only one of the eight survived to reach England after 
nine years' wandering in Brazil.^ 

Onward, sails furled, bare poles straining to the 
storm, drifted Drake in the Golden Hind. Luck, 
that so often favors daring, or the courage, that is its 
own talisman, kept him from the rocks. With 
battened hatches he drove before what he could not 

1 The eight castaways in the shallop succeeded in passing back through the straits. 
At Plata they were attacked by the Indians ; four, wounded, succeeded in escaping. 
The others were captured. Reaching islands off the coast of Patagonia, two of the 
wounded died. The remaining two suffered shipwreck on a barren island, where the 
only food was fruit ; the only drink, the juice of the fruits. Making a raft of floating 
planks ten feet long, the two committed themselves to God and steered for the main- 
land. Here Pilcher died two hours after they had landed from drinking too much 
water. The survivor, Peter Carder, lived among the savages of Brazil for eight years 
before he escaped and got passage to England, where he related his adventures to Queen 
Elizabeth. The Queen gave him twenty-two angels and sent him to Admiral Howard 
for employment. Purchas' Pilgrims, Vol. IV. 



FRANCIS DRAKE IN CALIFORNIA 153 

stem, southward and south, clear down where Atlantic 
and Pacific met at Cape Horn, now for the first time 
seen by navigator. Here at last, on October 30, came 
a lull. Drake landed, and took possession of this 
earth's end for the Queen. Then he headed his prow 
northward for the forbidden waters of the Pacific 
bordering New Spain. Not a Spaniard was seen up to 
the Bay of San Filipe off Chile, where by the end of 
November Drake came on an Indian fisherman. 
Thinking the ship Spanish, the fellow offered to pilot 
her back eighteen miles to the harbor of Valparaiso. 

Spanish vessels lay rocking to the tide as Drake 
glided into the port. So utterly impossible was it 
deemed for any foreign ship to enter the Pacific, that 
the Spanish commander of the fleet at anchor dipped 
colors in salute to the pirate heretic, thinking him a 
messenger from Spain, and beat him a rattling welcome 
on the drum as the Golden Hind knocked keels with the 
Spanish bark. Drake, doubtless, smiled as he returned 
the salute by a wave of his plumed hat. The Spaniards 
actually had wine jars out to drown the newcomers 
ashore, when a quick clamping of iron hooks locked 
the Spanish vessel in death grapple to the Golden Hind. 
An English sailor leaped over decks to the Spanish 
galleon with a yell of " Doiune, Spanish dogges!" The 
crew of sixty English pirates had swarmed across the 
vessel like hornets before the poor hidalgo knew what 
had happened. Head over heels, down the hatchway, 
reeled the astonished dons. Drake clapped down 



154 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

hatches, and had the Spaniards trapped while his men 
went ashore to sack the town. One Spaniard had suc- 
ceeded in swimming across to warn the port.^ When 
Drake landed, the entire population had fled to the 
hills. Rich plunder in wedges of pure gold, and gems, 
was carried off from the fort. Not a drop of blood was 
shed. Crews of the scuttled vessels were set ashore, 
the dismantled ships sent drifting to open sea. The 
whole fiasco was conducted as harmlessly as a melo- 
drama, with a moral thrown in ; for were not these 
zealous Protestants despoiling these zealous Catholics, 
whose zeal, in turn, had led them to despoil the Indian .? 
There was a moral; but it wore a coat of many colors. 
The Indian was rewarded, and a Greek pilot forced 
on board to steer to Lima, the great treasury of Peru- 
vian gold. Giving up all hope of the other English 
vessels joining him, Drake had paused at Coquimbo to 
put together a small sloop, when down swooped five 
hundred Spanish soldiers. In the wild scramble for 
the Golden Hind, one sailor was left behind. He was 
torn to pieces by the Spaniards before the eyes of 
Drake's crew. Northling again sailed Drake, piloted 
inshore by the Greek to Tarapaca, where Spanish 
treasure was sent out over the hills to await the call 
of ship; and sure enough, sound asleep in the sun- 
light, fatigued from his trip lay a Spanish carrier, 

1 The plunder of this port was 60,000 pesos of gold, jewels, and goods ( pesos about 
8 shillings, $7.') ; 1770 jars of wine, together with the silver of the chapel altar, which 
was given to Fletcher. 




Francis Drake. 



FRANCIS DRAKE IN CALIFORNIA 155 

thirteen bars of silver piled beside him on the sand. 
When that carrier wakened, the ship had called ! Far- 
ther on the English moored and went inland to see if 
more treasure might be coming over the hills. Along 
the sheep trails came a lad whistling as he drove eight 
Peruvian sheep laden with black leather sacks full 
of gold. 

Drake's men were intoxicated with their success. 
It was impossible to attack Panama with only the 
Golden Hind; but what if the Golden Hind could catch 
the Glory of the South Seas — the splendid Spanish 
galleon that yearly carried Peruvian gold up to Panama ? 
Drake gained first news of the treasure ship being 
afloat while he was rifling three barks at Aricara below 
Lima; but he knew coureurs were already speeding 
overland to warn the capital against the Golden Hind. 
Drake pressed sail to outstrip the land messenger, and 
glided into Callao, the port of Lima, before the 
thirty ships lying dismantled had the slightest inkling 
of his presence. 

Viceroy Don Francisco de Toledo of Lima thought 
the overland coureur mad. A pirate heretic in the 
South Seas ! Preposterous ! Some Spanish rascal 
had turned pirate; so the governor gathered up two 
thousand soldiers to march with all speed for Callao, 
with hot wrath and swift punishment for the culprit. 
Drake had already sacked Callao, but he had missed 
the treasure ship. She had just left for Panama. 
The Golden Hind was lying outside the port becalmed 



156 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

when Don Toledo came pouring his two thousand 
soldiers down to the wharves. The Spaniards dashed 
to embark on the rifled ships with a wild halloo ! He 
was becalmed, the blackguard pirate, — whoever he 
was, — they would tow out ! Divine Providence had 
surely given him into their hands; but just as they 
began rowing might and main, a fresh wind ruflfled 
the water. The Golden Hind spread her wings to the 
wind and was off^ like a bird ! Drake knew no ship 
afloat could outsail his swift little craft; and the Span- 
iards had embarked in such haste, they had come 
without provisions. Famine turned the pursuers back 
near the equator, the disgusted viceroy hastening to 
equip frigates that would catch the English pirate 
when famine must compel him to head southward. 

Drake slackened sail to capture another gold cargo. 
The crew of this caravel were so grateful to be put 
ashore instead of having their throats cut, that they 
revealed to Drake the stimulating fact that the Glory 
of the South Seas, the treasure ship, was only two days 
ahead laden with golden wealth untold. 

It was now a wild race for gold — for gold enough 
to enrich every man of the crew; for treasure that 
might buy up half a dozen European kingdoms and 
leave the buyer rich; for gold in huge slabs the shape 
of the legendary wedges long ago given the rulers of 
the Incas by the descendants of the gods; gold to be 
had for the taking by the striking of one sure blow at 
England's enemy ! Drake called on the crew to acquit 



FRANCIS DRAKE IN CALIFORNIA 157 

themselves like men. The sailors answered with a 
shout. Every inch of sail was spread. Old muskets 
and cutlasses were scoured till they shone like the sun. 
Men scrambled up the mast poles to gaze seaward for 
sight of sail to the fore. Every nerve was braced. 
They were now across the equator. A few hundred 
miles more, and the Glory of the South Seas would lie 
safe inside the strong harbor of Panama. Drake or- 
dered the thirty cannon ready for action, and in a loud 
voice offered the present of his own golden chain to 
the man who should first descry the sails of the Span- 
ish treasure. For once his luck failed him. The wind 
suddenly fell. Before Drake needed to issue the order, 
his "brave boys" were over decks and out in the small 
boats rowing for dear life, towing the Golden Hind. 
Day or night from February twenty-fourth, they did 
not slack, scarcely pausing to eat or sleep. Not to 
lose the tremendous prize by seeing the Glory of the 
South Seas sail into Panama Bay at the last lap of the 
desperate race, had these bold pirates ploughed a 
furrow round the world, daring death or devil ! 

At three in the afternoon of March the 1st, John 
Drake, the commander's brother, shouted out from 
the mast top where he clung, "Sail ho!" and the 
blood of every Englishman aboard jumped to the 
words ! At six in the evening, just off Cape Francisco, 
they were so close to the Glory of the South Seas, they 
could see that she was compelled to sail slowly, owing 
to the weight of her cargo. So unaware of danger was 



158 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

the captain that he thought Drake some messenger 
sent by the viceroy, and instead of getting arms in 
readiness and pressing sail, he lowered canvas, came 
to anchor, and waited ! ' Drake's announcement was 
a roaring cannonade that blew the mast poles off the 
Spanish ship, crippling her like a bird with wings 
broken. For the rest, the scene was what has been 
enacted wherever pirates have played their game — 
a furious fusillade from the cannon mouths belching 
from decks and port-holes, the unscathed ship riding 
down on the staggering victim like a beast on its prey, 
the clapping of the grappling hooks that bound the 
captive to the sides of her victor, the rush over decks, 
the flash of naked sword, the decks swimming in blood, 
and the quick surrender. The booty from this treas- 
ure ship was roughly estimated at twenty-six tons of 
pure silver, thirteen chests of gold plate, eighty pounds 
of pure gold, and precious jewels — emeralds and 
pearls — to the value in modern money of seven hun- 
dred and twenty thousand dollars. 

Drake realized now that he dared not return to 
England by the Straits of Magellan. All the Spanish 
frigates of the Pacific were on the watch. The Golden 
Hind was so heavily freighted WMth treasure, it was 
actually necessary to lighten ballast by throwing spices 
and silks overboard. One can guess that the orchestra 
played a stirring refrain off Cape Francisco that night. 

The Northeast Passage from Asia to Europe was 

1 The captain was a Biscayan, one Juan dc Anton. 



FRANCIS DRAKE IN CALIFORNIA 159 

still a myth of the geographers. Drake's friend, Fro- 
bisher, had thought he found it on the Atlantic side. 
After taking counsel with his ten chosen advisers, 
Drake decided to give the Spanish frigates the slip by 
returning through the mythical Northeast Passage. 
Stop was made at Guatalco, off the west coast of 
New Spain, for repairs. Here, the poor Portuguese 
pilot brought all the way from the islands off the 
west coast of Africa, was put ashore.^ He was 
tortured by the Spaniards for piloting Drake to the 
South Seas. In the course of rifling port and ship 
at Guatalco, charts to the Philippines and Indian 
Ocean were found ; so that even if the voyage to Eng- 
land by the Northeast Passage proved impossible, 
the Golden Hind could follow these charts home 
round the world by the Indian Ocean and Good Hope 
up Africa. 

It was needless for Drake to sack more Spanish 
floats. He had all the plunder he could carry. From 
the charts he learned that the Spaniards always struck 
north for favorable winds. Heading north, month 
after month, the Golden Hind sailed for the shore that 
should have led northeast, and that puzzled the mari- 
ners by sheering west and yet west; fourteen hundred 
leagues she sailed along a leafy wilderness of tangled 
trees and ropy mosses, beauty and decay, the froth 
of the beach combers aripple on the very roots of the 

1 Nuno Silva is the name of this pilot. It is from his story that many of the 
details of this part of the voyage are obtained. 



i6o VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

trees; dolphins coursing round the hull like grey- 
hounds; flying fish with mica for wings flitting over 
the decks; forests of seaweed warning out to deeper 
water. Then, a sudden cold fell, cold and fogs that 
chilled the mariners of tropic seas to the bone. The 
veering coast pushed them out farther westward, far 
north of what the Spanish charts showed. Instead 
of flying fish now, were whales, whales in schools of 
thousands that gambolled round the Golden Hind. 
As the north winds — "frozen nimphes," the record 
calls them — blew down the cold Arctic fogs, Drake's 
men thought they were certainly nearing the Arctic 
regions. Where were they .? Plainly lost, lost some- 
where along what are now known as Mendocino, and 
Blanco, and Flattery. In a word, perhaps up as far 
as Oregon, and Washington. One record says they 
went to latitude 43. Another record, purporting to 
be more correct, says 48. The Spaniards had been 
north as far as California, but beyond this, however 
far he may have gone, Drake was a discoverer in the 
true sense of the word. Mountains covered with snow 
they saw, and white cliffs, and low shelving shores, 
which is more descriptive of Oregon and Washington 
than California; but only the sudden transition from 
tropic heat to chilling northern fogs can explain the 
crew's exaggerated idea of cold along the Pacific coast. 
Land was sighted at 42, north of Mendocino, and an 
effort made to anchor farther north; but contrary 
winds and a rock bottom gave insecure mooring. 



FRANCIS DRAKE IN CALIFORNIA i6i 

This was not surprising, as it was on this coast that 
Cook and Vancouver failed to find good harborage. 
The coast still seemed to trend westward, dispelling 
hopes of a Northeast Passage } and if the world could 
have accepted Drake's conclusions on the matter, a 
deal of expenditure in human hfe and effort might 
have been saved. 

Two centuries before the deaths of Bering and Cook, 
trying to find that Passage, Drake's chronicler wrote : 
" The cause of this extreme cold we conceive to he the 
large spreading of the Asian and American continent, 
if they be not fully pined, yet seem they to come very 
neere, from whose high and snow-covered mountains, 
the north and north-west winds send abroad their frozen 
nimphes to the infecting of the whole air — hence comes 
it that in the middest of their summer^ the snow hardly 
departeth from these hills at all ; hence come those thicke 
mists and most stinking fogges, . . . for these reasons 
we coniecture that either there is no passage at all 
through these Northerne coasts, which is most likely, 
or if there he, that it is unnavigahle. . . . Adde there 
unto, that though we searched the coast diligently even 
unto the 48 degree, yet found we not the land to trend in 
any place towards the East, hut rather running continu- 
ally North-west, as if it went directly to meet with Asia. 
. . . of which we infallibly concluded rather than con- 
lectured, that there was none.'' 

Giving up all idea of a Northeast Passage, Drake 
turned south, and on June 17 anchored in a bay now 



i62 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

thoroughly identified as Drake's Bay, north of San 
Francisco. 

The next morning, while the English were yet on 
the Golden Htndy came an Indian in a canoe, shouting 
out oration of welcome, blowing feather down on the 
air as a sign of dovelike peace, and finally after three 
times essaying courage, coming near enough the Eng- 
lish to toss a rush basket full of tobacco into the ship. 
In vain Drake threw out presents to allure the Indian 
on board. The terrified fellow scampered ashore, 
refusing everything but a gorgeous hat, that floated 
out on the water. For years the legend of Drake's 
ship was handed down as a tradition among the Ind- 
ians of this bay.^ 

By the 21st tents were erected, and a rude fortifica- 
tion of stone thrown round in protection where the 
precious cargo of gold could be stored while the ship 
was to be careened and scraped. At the foot of the 
hill, the poor Indians gathered and gazed spellbound 
at the sight of this great winged bird of the ocean, 
sending thirty cannon trundling ashore, and herself 
beginning to rise up from the tide on piles and scaf- 
folding. As Drake sent the assembled tribe presents, 
the Indians laid down their bows and spears. So 
marvellously did the wonders of the white men grow 
— sticks that emitted puffs of fire (muskets), a ship 
so large it could have carried their tribe, clothing in 
velvet and gold braid gorgeous as the plumage of a 

1 See Professor George Davidson's pamphlet on Drake. 



FRANCIS DRAKE IN CALIFORNIA 163 

bird, cutlasses of steel — that by the 23d great as- 
semblages of Indians were on their knees at the foot 
of the hill, offering sacrifices to the wonderful beings 
in the fort. Whatever the English pirate's faults, he 
deserves credit for treating the Indians with an honor 
that puts later navigators to shame. When he saw 
them gashing bodies in sacrifice, his superstition took 
fire with fear of Divine displeasure for the sacrilege; 
and the man who did not scruple to treat black slaves 
picked up among the Spaniards baser than he would 
have treated dogs, now fell "to prayers," as the old 
chronicle says, reading the Bible aloud, and setting 
his crew to singing psalms, and pointing to the sky, 
at which the Indians grunted approvals of "ho — ho!" 

Three days later came coureurs from the " King of 
the Indians" — the chief — bidding the strangers 
prepare for the great sachem's visit. The coureurs 
advanced gyrating and singing; so that the English 
saw in this strange people nomads like the races of 
Scripture, whose ceremony was one of song and dance. 
The warriors preceding the chief carried what the 
English thought "a sceptre," but what we moderns 
would call a peace-pipe. The chains in their hands 
were probably strings of bears' claws, or something 
like wampum; the "crowns of feathers," plumed 
head-dresses; the gifts in the rush baskets borne by 
the women to the rear, maize and tobacco. 

Drake drew his soldiers up in line, and with trum- 
pets sounding and armor at gleam marched out to wel- 



i64 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

come the Indian chief. Then the whole company of 
savages broke out in singing and dancing. Drake 
was signalled to sit down in the centre. Barely had 
he obeyed when to the shouting and dancing of the 
multitude, "a chain" was thrown over his neck, "a 
crown" placed on his head, and "the sceptre" put in 
his hand. According to Indian custom, Drake was 
welcomed by the ceremony of adoption in the tribe, 
"the sceptre" being a peace-pipe; "the crown," an 
Indian warrior's head-dress. Far otherwise the cere- 
mony appeared to the romantic treasure hunters. 
"/n the name and to the use of Her Most Excellent 
Majesty," records the chaplain, '^ he {Drake) tooke the 
sceptre, crowne, and dignity of the sayd countrie into 
his hand; " though, added the pious chaplain of pirates, 
when he witnessed the Indians bringing the sick to be 
healed by the master pirate's touch, — ''we groane in 
spirit to see the power of Sathan so farre prevails." 

To avert disaster for the sacrilege of the sacred 
touch of healing, Drake added to his prayers strong 
lotions and good ginger plasters. Sometime in the 
next five weeks, Drake travelled inland with the Ind- 
ians, and because of patriotism to his native land 
and the resemblance of the white sand cliffs to 
that land, called the region "New Albion." "New 
Albion" would be an offset to "New Spain." Drake 
saw himself a second Cortes, and nailed to a tree a 
brass plate on which was graven the Queen's name, 
the year, the free surrender of the country to the 



FRANCIS DRAKE IN CALIFORNIA 165 

Queen, and Drake's own name; for, says the chaplain, 
quite ignorant of Spanish voyages, ''the Spaniards 
never had any dealing, or so much as set a foot in this 
country, the utmost of their discoveries reaching only 
many degrees Southward of this place." 

Drake's misunderstanding of the Indian ceremony 
would be comical if it were not that later historians 
have solemnly argued whether an act of possession by 
a pirate should hold good in international law. 

On the 23d of July the English pirate bade fare- 
well to the Indians. As he looked back from the sea, 
they were running along the hilltops burning more of 
the fires which he thought were sacrifices. 

Following the chart taken from the Spanish ship, 
Drake steered for the Philippines, thence southward 
through the East Indies to the Indian Ocean, and 
past Good Hope, back to Plymouth, where he came 
to anchor on September 26, 1580. Bells were set 
ringing. Post went spurring to London with word 
that Drake, the corsair, who had turned the Spanish 
world upside down, had come home. For a week 
the little world of England gave itself up to feasting. 
Ballads rang with the fame of Drake. His name was 
on every tongue. One of his first acts was to visit his 
old parents. Then he took the Golden Hind round 
the Channel to be dry-docked in Deptford. 

For the once, the tactful Queen was in a quandary. 
Complaints were pouring in from Spain. The Span- 



i66 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

ish ambassador was furious, and presented bills of 
sequestration against Drake, but as the amount 
sequestered, pending investigation, was only fifty-six 
thousand pounds, one may suspect that Elizabeth let 
Drake protect in his own way what he had taken in 
his own way. For six months, while the world re- 
sounded with his fame, the court withheld approval. 
Jealous courtiers "deemed Drake the master thief 
of the unknown world," till Elizabeth cut the Gor- 
dian knot by one of her defiant strokes. On April 4 
she went in state to dine on the Golden Hind, to the 
music of those stringed instruments that had harped 
away Drake's fear of death or devil as he ploughed 
an English keel round the world. After the dinner, 
she bade him fall to his knees and with a light touch 
of the sword gave him the title that was seal of the 
court's approval. The Golden Hind was kept as 
a public relic till it fell to pieces on the Thames, 
and the wood was made into a memorial chair for 
Oxford. 

After all the perils Drake saw in the subsequent 
war — Cadiz and the Armada — it seems strange that 
he should return to the scene of his past exploits to die. 
He was with Hawkins in the campaign of 1595 against 
Spain in the New World. Things had not gone well. 
He had not approved of Hawkins's plans of attack, 
and the venture was being bungled. Sick of the equa- 
torial fever, or of chagrin from failure, Drake died off 
Porto Bello in the fifty-first year of his age. His body 



FRANCIS DRAKE IN CALIFORNIA 167 

was placed in a leaden coffin, and solemnly committed 
to that sea where he had won his first glory. ^ 

1 To give even a brief account of Dralte's life would fill a small encyclopaedia. The 
story of his first ruin off Vera Cruz, of his campaign of vengeance, of his piratical voy- 
age to the Pacific, of his doings with the California Indians, of his fight in the Armada 
— any one of these would fill an ordinary volume. Only that part of his life bearing on 
American exploration has been given here, and that sacrificed in detail to keep fi-om 
cumbering the sweep of his adventure. No attempt has been made to pass judgment on 
Drake's character. Like Baranof of a later day, he was a curious mixture of the 
supremely selfish egoist, and of the religious enthusiast, alternately using his egoism as 
a support for his religion, and his religion as a support for his egoism ; and each reader 
will probably pass judgment on Drake according as the reader's ideal of manhood is the 
altruist or the egoist, the Christ-type or "the great blond beast" of modern philo- 
sophic thought, the man supremely indifferent to all but self, glorying in triumph though 
it be knee-deep in blood. Nor must we moderns pass too hypocritical judgment on the 
hero of the Drake type. Drake had invested capital in his venture. He had the bless- 
ing of Church and State on what he was about to do ; and what he did was to take what 
he had strength and dexterity to take independent of the Ten Commandments, which is 
not so far different from many commercial methods of to-day. We may appear as 
unmoral in our methods to future judges as Drake appears to us. Just as no attempt 
has been made to analyze Drake's character — to balance his lack of morals with his 
courage — so minor details, that would have led off from the main current of events, 
have been omitted. For instance, Drake spilled very little Spanish blood and was Chris- 
tian in his treatment of the Indians ; but are these credit marks offset by his brutality 
toward the black servants whom the pirates picked up among the Spaniards, of whom 
one poor colored girl was marooned on a Pacific island to live or die or rot .'' To be 
sure, the Portuguese pilot taken from a scuttled caravel off the west coast of Africa on 
the way out, and forced to pilot Drake to the Pacific, was well treated on the voyage. 
At least, there is no mention to the contrary ; but when Drake had finished with the 
fellow, though the English might have known very well what terrible vengeance Spain 
would take, the pilot was dumped off on the coast of New Spain, where, one old record 
states, he was tortured, almost torn to pieces, for having guided Drake. 

The great, indeed, primary and only authorities for Drake's adventures are, of course, 
Hakluyt, Vol. Ill ; for the fate of the lost crews, Purchai Pilgrims, Vol. Ill and 
Vol. I, Book II, and Vol. IV 5 and the Hakluyt Society Proceedings, 1854, which are 
really a reprint of The World Encompassed, by Francis Fletcher, the chaplain, in i6'^8, 
with the addition of documents contemporary with Fletcher's by unknown writers. The 
title-page of The World Encompassed reads almost like an old ballad — ' ^for the stir- 
ring up of heroick spirits to benefit their countries, and eterni-ze their names by likt 



i68 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

attempts.'''' Kohl and Davidson's Reports of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, 1884 
and 1886, are also invaluable as establishing Drake's land-fall in California. Miller 
Christy's Silver Map of the World gives a splendid facsimile of the medal issued to 
commemorate Drake's return, of which the original is in the British Museum. Among 
biographers, Corbett's Drake, and Barrow's Life of Sir Francis Drake, give full details 
of his early and personal life, including, of course, his great services in the Armada. 

Furious controversy has waged over Drake on two points : Did he murder Doughty ? 
Did he go as far north on the west coast of America as 48° ? Hakluyt's account says 
43° ; The fVorld Encompassed, by Fletcher, the chaplain, says 48° ; though all 
accounts agree it was at 38° he made harbor. I have not dealt with either dispute, 
stating the bare facts, leaving each reader to draw his own conclusions, though it seems 
to me a little foolish to contend that the claim of the 48th degree was an afterthought 
interpolated by the writer to stretch British possessions over a broader swath ; for even 
two hundred years after the issue of the Silver Map of the World, when Cook was on 
this coast, so little was known of the west shores of America by Englishmen that men 
were still looking out for a Gamaland, or imaginary continent in the middle of the 
Pacific. 

The words of the narrative bearing on America are : "We came to 42 degree of 
North latitude, where on the night following (June 3) we found such alterations of 
heat, into extreme and nipping cold, that our men in general did grievously complain 
thereof, some of them feeling their health much impaired thereby ; neither was it that 
this chanced in the night alone, but the day following carried with it not only the 
markes, but the stings and force of the night . . . ; besides that the pinching and 
biting air was nothing altered, the very ropes of our ship were stifFe, and the rain which 
fell was an unnatural congealed and frozen substance so that we seemed to be rather in the 
frozen Zone than any where so neere unto the sun or these hotter climates ... it 
came to that extremity in sayling but two degrees farther to the northward in our course, 
that though seamen lack not good stomachs ... it was a question whether hands 
should feed their mouths, or rather keepe from the pinching cold that did benumme 
them . . . our meate as soone as it was remooved from the fire, would presently in a 
manner be fi-ozen up, and our ropes and tackling in a few days were growne to that 
stifFnesse . . . yet would not our general be discouraged but as well by comfortable 
speeches, of the divine providence, and of God's loving care over his children, out of the 
Scriptures . . . the land in that part of America, beares farther out into the West than 
we before imagined, we were neerer on it than we were aware ; yet the neerer still we 
came unto it, the more extremity of cold did sease upon us. The fifth day of June, we 
wc.^ forced by contrary windes to runne in with the shoare, which we then first descried, 
and to cast anchor in a bad bay, the best roade we could for the present meete with, 
where we were not without some danger by reason of the many extreme gusts and flawes 
that beate upon us, which if they ceased, and were still at any time . . . there fol- 
lowed most vile, thicke and stinking fogges against which the sea prevailed nothing 



FRANCIS DRAKE IN CALIFORNIA 169 

... to go further North, the extremity of the cold would not permit us and the winds 
directly bent against us, having once gotten us under sayle againe, commanded us to the 
Southward whether we would or no. 

" From the height of 48 degrees in which now we were to 38, we found the land 
by coasting alongst it, to be but low and plaine — every hill whereof we saw many but 
none were high, though it were in June, and the sunne in his nearest approach . . . 
being covered with snow. ... In 38 deg. 30 min. we fell with a convenient and fit 
harborough and June 17 came to anchor therein, where we continued till the 23rd day 
of July following . . . neither could we at any time in whole fourteen days together 
find the aire so cleare as to be able to take the height of sunne or starre . . . after our 
departure from the heate we always found our bodies, not as sponges, but strong and 
hardened, more able to beare out cold, though we came out of the excesse of heate, then 
chamber champions could hae beene, who lye in their feather beds till they go to sea. 

"... Trees without leaves, and the ground without greennes in these months of 
June and July ... as for the cause of this extremity, they seem . . . chiefest we 
conceive to be the large spreading of the Asian and American continent, which (some- 
what Northward of these parts) if they be not fully joyned, yet seeme they to come 
very neere one to the other. From whose high and snow-covered mountains, the 
North and Northwest winds (the constant visitants of those coasts) send abroad their 
frozen nimphes, to the infecting of the whole aire with this insufferable sharpnesse. 
. . . Hence comes the generall squalidnesse and barrennesse of the countrie ; hence 
comes it that in the midst of their summer, the snow hardly departeth . . . from their 
hils at all ; hence come those thicke mists and most stinking fogges, which increase so 
much the more, by how much higher the pole is raised . . . also from these reasons 
we coniecture that either there is no passage at all through these Northern coasts which is 
most likely or if there be, that yet it is unnavigable. . . . Add here unto, that though 
we searched the coast diligently, even unto the 48°, yet found we not the land to trend 
so much as one point in any place towards the East, but rather running on continually 
Northwest, as if it went directly to meet with Asia ; and even in that height, when we 
had a franke winde to have carried us through, had there been a passage, yet we had a 
smoothe and calme sea, with ordinary flowing and reflowing, which could not have beene 
had there been a frete ; of which we rather infallibly concluded, then coniectured, that 
there was none. 

" The next day, after coming to anchor in the aforesaid harbour, the people of the 
countrey showed themselves, sending off a man with great expedition to us in a canow, 
who being yet but a little from the shoare, and a great way from our ship, spake to us 
continually as he came rowing in. And at last at a reasonable distance, staying himself, 
he began more solemnly a long and tedious oration, after his manner ; using in the 
deliverie thereof, many gestures and signes, mouing his hands, turning his head and body 
many wayes ; and after his oration ended, with great show and reverence and submission 
returned backe to shoare again. He shortly came againe the second time in like manner, 



lyo VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

and so the third time, when he brought with him (as a present from the rest) a bunch 
of feathers, much like the feathers of a blacke crowe, very neatly and artificially gathered 
upon a string, and drawne together into a round bundle, being verie cleane and finely cut, 
and bearing in length an equall proportion one with another a special cognizance (as we 
afterwards observed) which they . . . weare on their heads. With this also he brought 
a little basket made of rushes, and filled with an herbe which they called Tobah. Both 
which being tyed to a short rodde, he cast into our boate. Our generall intended to 
haue recompenced him immediately with many good things he would haue bestowed on 
him ; but entering into the boate to deliver the same, he could not be drawne to receive 
them by any meanes, save one hat, which being cast into the water out of the ship, he 
took up (refusing utterly to meddle with any other thing) though it were upon a board 
put off unto him, and so presently made his returne. After which time our boate could 
row no way, but wondering at us as at gods, they would follow the same with admira- 
tion. . . . 

" The third day following, viz., the 21, our ship having received a leake at sea, was 
brought to anchor neerer the shoare, that her goods being landed she might be repaired ; 
but for that we were to prevent any danger that might chance against our safety, our 
Generall first of all landed his men, with all necessary provision, to build tents and make 
a fort for the defence of ourselves and our goods . . . which when the people of the 
country perceived us doing, as men set on fire to war in defence of their countrie, in 
great hast and companee, with such weapons as they had, they came down unto us, and 
yet with no hostile meaning or intent to hurt us : standing when they drew neerer, as 
men ravished in their mindes, with the sight of such things, as they never had seene or 
heard of before that time : their errand being rather with submission and feare to worship 
us as Gods, than to have warre with us as mortall men : which thing, as it did partly 
show itselfe at that instant, so did it more and more manifest itself afterwards, during the 
whole time of our abode amongst them. At this time, being veilled by signs to lay 
from them their bowes and arrowes, they did as they were directed and so did all the 
rest, as they came more and more by companies unto him, growing in a little while to a 
great number, both of men and women. 

"... Our Generall, with all his company, used all meanes possible gently to 
intreate them, bestowing upon each of them liberally good and necessary things to cover 
their nakedness ; withall signifying unto them we were no Gods but men, and had need 
of such things to cover our owne shame ; teaching them to use them to the same ends, 
for which cause also we did eate and drinke in their presence, . . . they bestowed upon 
our Generall and diverse of our company, diverse things as feathers, cawles of networke, 
the quivers of their arrowes, made of faune skins, and the very skins of beasts that their 
women wore upon their bodies . . . they departed with joy to their houses, which 
houses are digged round within the earth, and have fi-om the uppermost brimmes of the 
circle, clefts of wood set up, and joyned close together at the top, like our spires on the 
steeple of a church, which being covered with earth, ... are very warme j the doore 




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FRANCIS DRAKE IN CALIFORNIA 171 

in the most of them performs the office also of a chimney to let out the smoake ; it's 
made in bignesse and fashion like to an ordinary scuttle in a ship, and standing slope-wise ; 
the beds are the hard ground, onely with rushes strewed upon it and lying round about 
the house, have their fire in the middest, . . . with all expedition we set up our tents, 
and intrenched ourselves with walls of stone. . . . Against the end of two daies, 
there was gathered together a great assembly of men, women and children, bringing with 
them as they had before done, feathers and bagges of Tobah for present, or rather for 
sacrifices upon this persuasion that we were Gods. 

"When they came to the top of the hill at the bottom whereof we had built our 
fort, they made a stand ; " . . . " this bloodie sacrifice (against our wils) being thus 
performed, our generall, with his companie, in the presence of those strangers, fell to 
prayers ; and by signes in lifting up our eyes and hands to heaven, signified unto them 
that that God whom we did serve and whom they ought to worship, was above : 
beseeching God, if it were his good pleasure, to open by some meanes their blinded eyes, 
that they might in due time be called to the knowledge of Him, the true and everliving 
God ; and of Jesus Christ, whom he hath sent, the salvation of the Gentiles. In the 
time of which prayers, singing of Psalmes, and reading of certaine Chapters in the Bible, 
they sate very attentively, and observing the end of every pause, with one voice still cried 
' oh ' greatly rejoicing in our exercises. 

" Our generall caused to be set up a monument of our being there, as also of her 
majesties and successors right and title to that kingdom ; namely a plate of brasse, fast 
nailed to a great and firme poste ; whereon is engraven her graces' name, and the day 
and year of our arrival there, and of the ft-ee giving up of the province and kingdom, 
both by the king and people, unto her majesties' hands : together with her highnesse 
picture and arms, in a piece of sixpence current English monie, shewing itselfe by a hole 
made of purpose through the plate j underneath was likewise engraven the name of our 
Generall. . . . 

" The Spaniards never had any dealings, or so much as set a foote in this country, 
the utmost of their discoveries reaching onely to many degrees Southward of this place." 

The Spanish version of Drake's burial is, that the body was weighted with shot at 
the heels and heaved over into the sea, without coffin or ceremony. 



CHAPTER VII 

1728-1779 

CAPTAIN COOK IN AMERICA 

The English Navigator sent Two Hundred Years later to find the 
New Albion of Drake's Discoveries — He misses both the Straits of 
Fuca and the Mouth of the Columbia, but anchors at Nootka, the 
Rendezvous of Future Traders — No Northeast Passage found 
through Alaska — The True Cause of Cook's Murder in Hawaii 
told by Ledyard — Russia becomes Jealous of his Explorations 

It seems impossible that after all his arduous labors 
and death, to prove his convictions, Bering's conclu- 
sions should have been rejected by the w^orld of learning. 
Surely his coasting westward, southwestward, abreast 
the long arm of Alaska's peninsula for a thousand 
miles, should have proved that no open sea — no 
Northeast Passage — was here, between Asia and 
America. But no ! the world of learnino- said 
fog had obscured Bering's observations. What he 
took for the mainland of America had been only a 
chain of islands. Northward of those islands was open 
sea between Asia and Europe, which might afford 
direct passage between East and West without cir- 
cumnavigating the globe. In fact, said Dr. Campbell, 

172 



CAPTAIN COOK IN AMERICA 173 

one of the most learned English writers of the day, 
"Nothing is plainer than that his (Bering's) discovery 
does not warrant any such supposition as that he 
touched the great continent making part of North 
America." 

The moonshine of the learned men in France and 
Russia was even wilder. They had definitely proved, 
evetj if there were no Gamaland — as Bering's voyage 
had shown — then there must be a southern continent 
somewhere, to keep the balance between the northern 
and southern hemispheres ; else the world would turn 
upside down. And there must also be an ocean be- 
tween northern Europe and northern Asia, else the 
world would be top-heavy and turn upside down. It 
was an age when the world accepted creeds for piety, 
and learned moonshine instead of scientific data; when, 
in a word, men refused to bow to fact ! 

All sorts of wild rumors were current. There was a 
vast continent in the south. There was a vast sea in 
the north. Somewhere was the New Albion, which 
Francis Drake had found north of New Spain. Just 
north of the Spanish possessions in America was a 
wide inlet leading straight through from the Pacific 
to the Atlantic, which an old Greek pilot — named Juan 
de Fuca — said he had traversed for the viceroy of 
New Spain. 

Even stolid-going England was infected by the rage 
for imaginary oceans and continents. The Hudson's 
Bay Fur Company was threatened with a withdrawal 



174 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

of its charter because it had failed to find a Northwest 
Passage from Atlantic to Pacific. Only four years 
after the death of Bering, an act of Parliament offered 
a reward of twenty thousand pounds to the officers 
and crew of any ships discovering a passage between 
Atlantic and Pacific north of 52°. There were even 
ingenious fellows with the letters of the Royal Society 
behind their names, who affected to think that the great 
Athabasca Lake, which Hearne had found, when he 
tramped inland from the Arctic and Coppermine 
River, was a strait leading to the Pacific. Athabasca 
Lake might be the imaginary strait of the Greek pilot, 
Juan de Fuca. To be sure, two Hudson's Bay Com- 
pany ships' crews — those under Knight and Barlow — 
had been totally lost fifty years before Hearne's tramp 
inland in 1771, trying to find that same mythical strait 
of Juan de Fuca westward of Hudson Bay. 

But so furious did public opinion wax over a North- 
west Passage at the very time poor Bering was dying 
in the North Pacific, that Captain Middleton was sent 
to Hudson Bay in 1 741-1742 to find a way to the Pa- 
cific. And when Middleton failed to find water where 
the Creator had placed land, Dobbs, the patron of the 
expedition and champion of a Northwest Passage at 
once roused the public to send out two more ships — 
the Dobbs and California. Failure again ! Theories 
never yet made Fact, never so much as added a hair's 
weight to Fact ! Ellis, who was on board, affected to 
think that Chesterfield Inlet — a great arm of the sea, 



CAPTAIN COOK IN AMERICA 175 

westward of Hudson Bay — might lead to the Pacific. 
This supposition was promptly exploded by the Hud- 
son's Bay Fur Company sending Captain Christopher 
and Moses Norton, the local governor of the company, 
up Chesterfield inlet for two hundred miles, where 
they found, not the Pacific, but a narrow river. 
Then the hue and cry of the learned theorists was — 
the Northwest Passage lay northward of Hudson Bay. 
Hearne was sent tramping inland to find — not sea, 
but land; and when he returned with the report of 
the great Athabasca Lake of Mackenzie River region, 
the lake was actually seized on as proof that there was 
a waterway to the Pacific. Then the brilliant plan 
was conceived to send ships by both the Atlantic and 
the Pacific to find this mythical passage from Europe 
to Asia. Pickersgill, who had been on the Pacific, was 
to go out north of Hudson Bay and work A^estward. 
To work eastward from the Pacific to the Atlantic was 
chosen a man who had already proved there was no 
great continental mass on the south, and that the world 
did not turn upside down, and who was destined to 
prove there was no great open ocean on the north, 
and still the world did not turn upside down. He was 
a man whose whole life had been based and built upon 
Fact, not Theory. He was a man who accepted 
Truth as God gave it to him, not as he had theorized 
it ought to be; a man who had climbed from a mud 
cottage to the position of the greatest navigator in the 
world — had climbed on top of facts mastered, not 



176 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

of schoolgirl moonshine, or study-closet theories. 
That man was Captain James Cook. 

Cook's life presents all the contrasts of true greatness 
world over. Like Peter the Great, of Russia, whose 
word had set in motion the exploration of the north- 
west coast of America, Cook's character consisted 
of elements that invariably lead to glory or ruin ; often, 
both. The word "impossible" was not in his vocabu- 
lary. He simply did not recognize any limitations to 
what a man rnight do, could do, would do, if he tried ; 
and that means, that under stress of risk or tempta- 
tion, or opposition, a man's caution goes to the winds. 
With Cook, it was risk that caused ruin. With the 
Czar of Russia, it was temptation. 

Born at Marton, a small parish of a north riding in 
the county of York, October 27, 1728, James Cook 
was the son of a day-laborer in an age when manual 
toil was paid at the rate of a few pennies a day. There 
were nine of a family. The home was a thatch-roofed 
mud cottage. Two years after Cook's birth, the father 
was appointed bailiff, which slightly improved family 
finances; but James was thirteen years of age before 
it was possible to send him to school. There, the 
progress of his learning was a gallop. He had a wizard- 
genius for figures. In three short years he had mastered 
all the Ayton school could teach him. At sixteen, his 
schooling was over. The father's highest ambition 
seems to have been for the son to become a successful 
shopkeeper in one of the small towns. The future 



CAPTAIN COOK IN AMERICA 177 

navigator was apprenticed to the village shop ; but 
Cook's ambitions v^ere not to be caged behind a counter. 
Eastward rolled the North Sea. Down at Hull 
were heard seamen's yarns to make the blood of a boy 
jump. It was 1746. The world was ringing with 
tales of Bering on the Pacific, of a southern continent, 
which didn't exist, of the Hudson's Bay Fur Company's 
illimitable domain in the north, of La Verendrye's 
• wonderful discoveries of an almost boundless region 
westward of New France toward the uncharted 
Western Sea. In a year and a half. Cook had his fill 
of shopkeeping. Whether he ran away, or had served 
his master so well that the latter willingly remitted 
the three years' articles of apprenticeship, Cook now 
followed his destiny to the sea. According to the 
world's standards, the change seemed progress back- 
ward. He was articled to a ship-owner of Whitby as a 
common seaman on a coaler sailing between Newcastle 
and London. One can see such coalers any day — • 
black as smut, grimed from prow to stern, with work- 
men almost black shovelling coal or hoisting tackling 
— pushing in and out among the statelier craft of any 
seaport. It is this stage in a great man's career 
which is the test. Is the man sure enough of himself 
to leave everything behind, and jump over the precipice 
into the unknown ? If ever he wishes to return to what 
he has left, he will have just the height of this jump to 
climb back to the old place. The old place is a cer- 
tainty. The unknown may engulf in failure. He 

N 



178 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

must chance that, and all for the sake of a faith in him- 
self, which has not yet been justified; for the sake of a 
vague star leading into the misty unknown. He knows 
that he could have been successful in the old place. 
He does not know that he may not be a failure in the 
new place. Art, literature, science, commerce — in 
all — it is the men and women who have dared to risk 
being failures that have proved the mainspring of 
progress. Cook was sure enough of himself to ex- 
change shopkeeper's linen for the coal-heaver's blue 
jeans, to risk following the star of his destiny to the 
sea. 

Presently, the commonplace, grimy duties which he 
must fulfil are taking him to Dublin, to Liverpool, 
to Norway ; and by the time he is twenty-two, he knows 
the Baltic trade well, and has heard all the pros and 
cons of the furious cackle which the schools have 
raised over that expedition of Bering's to the west 
coast of America. By the time he is twenty-four he 
is a first mate on the coal boats. Comes another vital 
change ! When he left the shop, he felt all that he had 
to do to follow his destiny was to go to sea. Now the 
star has led him up to a blank wall. The only promo- 
tion he can obtain on these merchantmen is to a cap- 
tainship; and the captaincy on a small merchantman 
will mean pretty much a monotonous flying back and 
forward like a shuttle between the ports of Europe and 
England. 

Cook took a resolution that would have cost any 



CAPTAIN COOK IN AMERICA 179 

man but one with absolute singleness of purpose a 
poignant effort. At the age of twenty-seven, he de- 
cided to enter the Royal Navy. Now, in a democratic 
age, we don't talk about such things; but there are 
unwritten laws and invisible lines just the same. Stand- 
ing on the captain's deck of an American warship not 
long ago, watching the deck hands below putting 
things shipshape, I asked an officer — "Is there any 
chance for those men to rise.?" 

"Yes, some," he answered tentatively, "but then, 
there is a difference between the men who have been 
trained for a position, and those who have worked up 
the line to it." If that difference exists in a demo- 
cratic country and age, what was it for Cook in a coun- 
try and at a time when lines of caste were hard and 
fast drawn ? But he entered the navy on the Eagle 
under Sir Hugh Palliser, who, almost at once, 
transferred him from the forecastle to the quarter- 
deck. What was the explanation of such quick recog- 
nition } Therein lies the difference between the man 
who tries and succeeds, and the man who tries and 
fails. Cook had qualified himself for promotion. He 
was so fitted for the higher position, that the higher 
position could not do without him. Whether rocking 
on the Baltic, or waiting for the stokers to heave out 
coal at Liverpool, every moment not occupied by sea- 
man's duties. Cook had filled by improving himself, 
by increasing his usefulness, by sharpening his brain, 
so that his brain could better direct his hands, by 



i8o VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

studying mathematics and astronomy and geography 
and science and navigation. As some one has said — 
there are lots of people with hands and no brain; and 
there are lots of people with brains and no hands; 
but the kind who will command the highest reward 
for their services to the world are those who have the 
finest combination of brains and hands. 

Four years after Cook had joined the navy, he was 
master on the Mercury with the fleet before Quebec, 
makins a chart of the St. Lawrence for Wolfe to take 
the troops up to the Heights of Abraham, piloting the 
boats to the attack on Montmorency, and conducting 
the embarkation of the troops, who were to win the 
famous battle, that changed the face of America. 

Now, the Royal Society wished to send some one to 
the South Seas, whose reliability was of such a recog- 
nized and steady-going sort, that his conclusions would 
be accepted by the public. Just twenty years from the 
time that he had left the shop, Cook was chosen for 
this important mission. What manner of man was he, 
who in that time had risen from life in a mud hut to 
the rank of a commander in the Royal Navy .? In 
manner, he was plain and simple and direct, no flourish, 
no unnecessary palaver of showy words, not a word he 
did not mean. In form, he was six feet tall, in perfect 
proportion, with brown hair and eyes, alertly pene- 
trating, with features sharp rather from habit of 
thought than from natural shape. 

On this mission he left England in 1768, anchored at 




Captain James Cook. 



CAPTAIN COOK IN AMERICA i8i 

the Society Islands of the South Seas in the spring of 
1769, explored New Zealand in the fall of the same year, 
rounded Australia in 1770 and returned to England 
in 1 771, the very year Hearne was trying to tramp it 
overland in search of a Northwest Passage. And he 
brought back no proof of that vast southern world 
which geographers had put on their maps. Promptly 
he was sent out on a second voyage to find or demolish 
that mythical continent of the southern hemisphere; 
and he demolished the myth of a southern continent 
altogether, returning from circumnavigating the globe 
just at the time when the furor of a Northwest Passage 
northward of Hudson Bay, northward even of Bering's 
course on the Pacific, was at its height. 

The third voyage was to determine finally the bounds 
of western America, the possibilities of a passage be- 
tween Europe and Asia by way of the Pacific. Two 
ships — the Resolutioji, four hundred and sixty tons, 
one hundred and twelve men, which Cook had used 
before, and the Discovery^ three hundred tons, eighty 
men — were purchased at Hull, the old port of Cook's 
boyhood dreams. To secure the good will of the crews, 
two months' wages were paid in advance. Captain 
Clerke commanded the Discovery ; and the two crews 
numbered men of whom the world was to hear more 
in connection with the northwest coast of America — 
a young midshipman, Vancouver, whose doings were 
yet to checkmate Spain; a young American, corporal 



i82 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

of marines, Ledyard, who was to have his brush with 
Russia; and other ambitious young seamen destined 
to become famous traders on the west coast of America. 

The two ships left England in midsummer of 1776, 
crossed the equator in September when every man fresh 
to the episode was caught and ducked overrails in 
equatorial waters, rounded Good Hope, touched at 
the Society Islands of the first voyage, and by spring of 
1778 had explored and anchored at the Sandwich 
Islands. Once on the Pacific, Cook mustered his 
crews and took them into his confidence ; he was going 
to try for that reward of twenty thousand pounds to 
the crew that discovered a Northeast Passage; and 
even if he missed the reward, he was going to have 
a shy at the most northern latitude ever attempted 
by navigator — 89°; would they do k^ The crew 
cheered. Whether they reached 89° or not, they 
decided to preserve their grog for the intense cold to 
be encountered in the north; so that the daily allow- 
ance was now cut to half. 

By March, the ships were off from the Sandwich 
Islands to the long swell of the Pacific, the slimy 
medusa lights covering the waters with a phosphor- 
escent trail of fire all night, the rockweed and sea leek 
floating past by day telling their tale of some far land. 
Cook's secret commission had been very explicit: 
"You are to proceed on as direct a course as you can 
to the coast of New Albion, endeavoring to fall in with 
it in latitude 45° north . . . and are strictly enjoined 



CAPTAIN COOK IN AMERICA 183 

not to touch on any part of the Spanish dominions 
. . . unless driven by accident . . . and to be very 
careful not to give any umbrage to the subjects of his 
Catholic Majesty . . . and if in further progress 
northward . . . you find any subjects of a European 
prince . . . you are not to give any cause of offence 
. . . proceed northward to 65°, carefully search for 
such inlets as appear pointing to Hudson Bay . . . 
use your utmost endeavors to pass through." The com- 
mission shows that England was unaware Spain had 
pushed north of 45°, and Russia north of 65°; for 
Spain jealously kept her explorations secret, and 
Russia's were not accepted. The commission also 
offered a reward for any one going within 1° of the 
Pole. It may be added — the offer is still open. 

For days after leaving the Sandwich Islands, not a 
bird was to be seen. That was a bad omen for land. 
Land must be far, indeed; and Cook began to fear 
there might be as much ocean in that northern hemi- 
sphere as the geographers of Russia and France — 
who actually tabulated Bering's discoveries as an 
island — had placed on the maps. But in the first 
week of March, a sea-gull came swimming over the 
crest of a wave. Where did she come from ^ Then 
an albatross was seen wheeling above the sea. Then, 
on March 6, two lonely land seals went plying past; 
and whales were noticed. Surely they were nearing 
the region that Drake, the English freebooter, had seen 
and named New Albion two hundred years before. 



i84 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

Suddenly, on the morning of March 7, the dim offing 
ahead showed thin, sharp, clear lines. The lines rose 
higher as the ship approached. They cut themselves 
against the sky in the form of mountains and hills with 
purple mist lying in the valleys. It was the New Albion 
at latitude 44° 33^ which Drake had discovered. The 
day was hazy and warm. Cook's crews wondered 
why Drake had complained of such cold. By night 
they found out. A roaring hurricane burst from the 
northern darkness with squalls of hail and snow and 
sleet, that turned the shore to one long reach of whitened 
cliffs straight up and down out of the sea. In com- 
memoration, they called the first landfall. Cape Foul- 
weather; and, in spite of the commission to sail north, 
drove under bare poles before the storm to 43°, naming 
the two capes passed Perpetua and Gregory. Only 
by the third week of March had the storm abated 
enough for them to turn north again. ^ 

Now, whether the old Greek pilot, Juan de Fuca, 
lied or dreamed, or only told a yarn of what some 
Indian had told him, it was along this coast that he 
had said the straits leading to the east side of America 
lay; and Cook's two ships hugged the coast as close as 
they dared for fear of roaring breakers and a landward 
wind. On March 23 rocks were seen lying off a high 
point capped with trees, behind which might be a 

1 The question may occur, why in the account of Cook's and Bering's voyage, 
the latitude is not oftener given. The answer is, the latitudes as given by Cook and 
Bering vary so much from the modern, it wou'.d only confuse the reader trying to follow 
a modern map. 



CAPTAIN COOK IN AMERICA 185 

strait; but a gale ashore and a lashing tide thundering 
over the rocks sent the ships scudding for the offing 
through fog and rain; and never a glimpse of a passage 
eastward could the crews obtain. Cook called the 
delusive point Cape Flattery and added: "It is in this 
very latitude (48° 15') that geographers have placed 
the pretended Straits of Juan de Fuca; but we saw 
nothing like it; nor is there the least possibility that any 
such thing ever existed." But Cook was too far out to 
descry the narrow opening — but thirteen miles wide 
— of Juan de Fuca, where the steamers of three con- 
tinents ply to-day; though the strait by no means led 
to Europe, as geographers thought. 

All night a hard gale drove them northward. When 
the weather cleared, permitting them to approach the 
coast again, high mountains, covered with snow and 
forests, jagged through the clouds like tent peaks. 
Tremendous breakers roared over sunken rocks. 
Point Breakers, Cook called them. Then the wind 
suddenly fell; and the ships were becalmed directly 
opposite the narrow entrance of a two-horned cove 
sheltered by the mountains. The small boats had all 
been mustered out to tow the two ships in, when a 
slight breeze sprang up. The flotilla drifted inland 
just as three canoes, carved in bizarre shapes of birds' 
heads and eagle claws, came paddling across the inlet. 
Three savages were in one, six in the other, ten in the 
third. They came slowly over the water, singing some 
song of welcome, beating time with their paddles, 



i86 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

scattering downy white feathers on the air, at intervals 
standing up to harangue a welcome to the newcomers. 
Soon thirty canoes were around the ships with some 
ten warriors in each. Still they came, shoals of them, 
like fish, with savages almost naked, the harbor smooth 
as glass, the grand tyee, or great chief of the tribes, 
standing erect shouting a welcome, with long elf-locks 
streaming down his back. Women and children now 
appeared in the canoes. That meant peace. The 
women were chattering like magpies; the men gur- 
gling and spluttering their surprise at the white visitors. 
For safety's sake the guns of the two ships were 
pointed ready; but the natives did not know the fear 
of a gun. It was the end of March when Cook first 
anchored off what he thought was the mainland of 
America. It was not mainland, but an island, and 
the harbor was one to become famous as the rendez- 
vous of Pacific traders — Nootka ! 

Three armed boats commanded by Mr. King, and 
one under Cook, at once proceeded from the ships to 
explore and sound the inlet. The entrance had been 
between two rocky points four miles apart past a chain 
of sunken rocks. Except in a northwest corner of the 
inlet, since known as Snug Cove, the water was too deep 
for anchorage; so the two ships were moored to trees, 
the masts unrigged, the iron forge set to w^ork on the 
shore; and the men began cutting timber for the new 
masts. And still the tiny specks dancing over the waves 
carrying canoe loads of savages to the English ships, 



CAPTAIN COOK IN AMERICA 187 

continued to multiply till the harbor seemed alive 
with warriors — two thousand at least there must have 
been by the first week of April after Cook's arrival. 
Some of the savages wore brightly painted wooden 
masks as part of their gala attire. Others carried 
totems — pieces of wood carved in the likeness of 
bird or beast to typify manitou of family or clan. By 
way of showing their prowess, some even offered the 
white men human skulls from which the flesh had not 
yet been taken. By this Cook knew the people were 
cannibals. Some were observed to be wearing spoons 
of European make as ornaments round their necks. 
What we desire to believe we easily accept. The 
white men did not ascribe the spoons to traders from 
New Spain on the south, or the Russian settlements to 
the north; but thought this place must be within trad- 
ing distance of Hudson Bay, whence the Indians must 
have obtained the spoons. And so they cherished the 
hope of a Northeast Passage from this slim sign. In 
a few days fifteen hundred beaver and sea-otter had 
been obtained in trade, sixty-nine sea-otter — each of 
which was worth at that time one hundred dollars in 
modern money — for a handful of old nails. 

To these deep-sea wanderers of Cook's crew^s, the 
harbor was as a fairy-land. Snow still covered the 
mountain tops ; but a tangled forest of dank growth 
with roots awash in the ripple of the sea, stretched 
down the hillsides. Red cedar, spruce, fir, — of 
enormous growth, broader in girth than a cart and 



i88 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

wagon in length, — cypress with twisted and gnarled 
knots red against the rank green; mosses swinging 
from branch to branch in snaky coils wherever the 
clouds settled and rested; islands studding the sea 
like emerald gems; grouse drumming their spring song 
through the dark underbrush; sea-mew and Mother 
Carey's chickens screaming and clacking overhead; 
the snowy summits red as wine in the sunset glow — 
all made up an April scene long cherished by these 
adventurers of the North. 

Early one morning in April the men cutting timber 
inland were startled to notice the underbrush alive 
with warriors armed. The first fear was of an ambush. 
Cook ordered the men to an isolated rock ready for 
defence; but the grand tyee or chief explained by 
signs that his tribe was only keeping off another tribe 
that wanted to trade with the white men. The worst 
trouble was from the inordinate thieving propensities 
of the natives. Iron, nails, belaying pins, rudders, 
anchors, bits of sail, a spike that could be pulled from 
the rotten wood of the outer keel by the teeth of a thief 
paddling below — anything, everything was snatched 
by the light-fingered gentry. Nor can we condemn 
them for it. Their moral standard was the Wolf Code 
of Existence — w^hich the white man has elaborated 
in his evolution — to take whatever they had the dex- 
terity and strength to take and to keep. When caught 
in theft, they did not betray as much sense of guilt as 
a dog stealing a bone. Why should they 1 Their 



CAPTAIN COOK IN AMERICA 189 

code was to take. The chief of the Nootkas presented 
Cook with a sea-otter cloak. Cook reciprocated with 
a brass-hiked sword. 

By the end of April the ships had been overhauled, 
and Cook was ready to sail. Porpoise were coursing 
the sea like greyhounds, and the stormy petrels in a 
clatter; but Cook was not to be delayed by storm. 
Barely had the two ships cleared the harbor, w4ien 
such a squall broke loose, they could do nothing but 
scud for open sea, turn tails to the wind, and lie help- 
less as logs, heads south. If it had not been for this 
storm, Cook would certainly have discovered that 
Nootka was on an island, not the coast of the main- 
land; but by the time the weather permitted an ap- 
proach to land again, Friday, May i, the ships were 
abreast that cluster of islands below the snowy cone of 
Mt. Edgecumbe, Sitka, where Chirikoff's Russians had 
first put foot on American soil. Cook was now at the 
northernmost limit of Spanish voyaging. 

By the 4th of May Cook had sighted and passed 
the Fairweather Range, swung round westward on the 
old course followed by Bering, and passed under the 
shadow of St. Elias towering through the clouds in a 
dome of snow. On the 6th the ships were at Kyak, 
where Bering had anchored, and amid myriad ducks 
and gulls were approaching a broad inlet northward. 
Now, just as Bering had missed exploring this part of 
the coast owing to foo-, so Cook had failed to trace that 
long archipelago of islands from Sitka Sound north- 



190 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

ward; but here, where the coast trends straight west- 
ward, was an opening that roused hopes of a Northeast 
Passage. The Resolution had sprung a leak; and in 
the second week of May, the inlet was entered in the 
hope of a shelter to repair the leak and a way north- 
east to the Atlantic. Barely had the ships passed up 
the sound, when they were enshrouded in a fog that 
wiped out every outline; otherwise, the high coast of 
glacial palisades — two hundred feet in places and 
four miles broad — might have been seen landlocked 
by mountains; but Mr. Gore launched out in a small 
boat steering north through haze and tide-rip. Twenty 
natives were seen clad in sea-otter skins, by which — 
the white men judged — no Russians could have 
come to this sound; for the Russians would not have 
permitted the Indians to keep such valuable sea-otter 
clothing. The glass beads possessed by the natives 
were supposed to attest proximity to traders of Hudson 
Bay. With an almost animal innocence of wrong, the 
Indians tried to steal the small boat of the Discovery, 
flourishing their spears till the white crew mustered. 
At another time, when the Discovery lay anchored, 
few lanterns happened to be on deck. No sailors 
were visible. It was early in the morning and every- 
body was asleep, the boat dark. The natives swarmed 
up the ship's sides like ants invading a sugar canister. 
Looking down the hatches without seeing any whites, 
they at once drew their knives and began to plunder. 
The whites dashed up the hatchway and drove the 



CAPTAIN COOK IN AMERICA 191 

plunderers over the rails at sword point. East and 
north the small boats skirted the mist-draped shores, 
returning at midnight with word the inlet was a closed 
shore. There was no Northeast Passage. They 
called the spider-shaped bay Prince William Sound; 
and at ten in the morning headed out for sea. 

Here a fresh disappointment awaited them. The 
natives of Prince William Sound had resembled the 
Eskimos of Greenland so much that the explorers 
were prepared to find themselves at the westward end 
of the American continent ready to round north into 
the Atlantic. A long ledge of land projected into the 
sea. They called this Cape Elizabeth, passed it, 
noted the reef of sunken rocks lying directly athwart a 
terrific tidal bore, and behold ! not the end of the con- 
tinent — no, not by a thousand miles — but straight 
across westward, beneath a smoking volcano that 
tinged the fog ruby-red, a lofty, naked spur three 
miles out into the sea, with crest hidden among the 
clouds and rock-base awash in thundering breakers. 
This was called Cape Douglas. Between these two 
capes was a tidal flood of perhaps sixty miles' breadth. 
Where did it come from .? Up went hopes again for 
the Northeast Passage, and the twenty thousand 
pounds ! Spite of driftwood, and roily waters, and a 
flood that ran ten miles an hour, and a tidal bore that 
rose twenty feet, up the passage they tacked, east to 
west, west to east, plying up half the month of June in 
rain and sleet, with the heavy pall of black smoke 



192 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

rolling from the volcano left far on the offing ! At 
last the opening was seen to turn abruptly straight 
east. Out rattled the small boats. Up the muddy 
waters they ran for nine miles till salt water became 
fresh water, and the explorers found themselves on a 
river. In irony, this point was called Turn-Again. 
The whole bay is now known as Cook's Inlet. Mr. 
King was sent ashore on the south side of Turn-Again 
to take possession. Twenty natives in sea-otter skins 
stood by watching the ceremony of flag unfurled and 
the land of their fathers being declared the possession 
of England. These natives were plainly acquainted 
with the use of iron; but "I will be bold to say," 
relates Cook, "they do not know the Russians, or they 
would not be wearing these valuable sea-otter skins." 

No Northeast Passage here ! So out they ply again 
for open sea through misty weather; and when it 
clears, they are in the green treeless region west of 
Cook's Inlet. Past Kadiak, past Bering's Foggy Isl- 
and, past the Shumagins where Bering's first sailor 
to die of scurvy had been buried, past volcanoes throw- 
ing up immense quantities of blood-red smoke, past 
pinnacled rocks, through mists so thick the roar of the 
breakers is their only guide, they glide, or drift, or 
move by inches feeling the way cautiously, fearful of 
wreck. 

Toward the end of June a great hollow green swell 
swings them through the straits past Oonalaska, 
northward at last ! Natives are seen in green trousers 



CAPTAIN COOK IN AMERICA 193 

and European shirts; natives who take off their hats 
and make a bow after the pompous fashion of the 
Russians. 

Twice natives bring word to Cook by letter and 
sign that the Russians of Oonalaska wish to see him. 
But Captain Cook is not anxious to see the Russians 
just now. He wants to forestall their explorations 
northward and take possession of the Polar realm for 
England. In August they are in Bristol Bay, north 
of the Aleutians, directly opposite Asia. Here Dr. 
Anderson, the surgeon, dies of consumption. Not so 
much fog now. They can follow the mainland. Far 
ahead there projects straight out in the sea a long spit 
of land backed by high hills, the westernmost point 
of North America — Cape Prince of Wales ! Bering 
is vindicated ! Just fifty years from Bering's explora- 
tion of 1728, the English navigator finds what Bering 
found: that America and Asia are not united; that no 
Northeast Passage exists; that no great oceanic body 
lies north of New Spain; that Alaska — as the Rus- 
sian maps had it after Bering's death — is not an 
island. 

Wind, rain, roily, shoaly seas breaking clear over the 
ship across decks drove Cook out from land to deeper 
water. With an Englishman's thoroughness for doing 
things and to make deadly sure just how the two con- 
tinents lay to each other. Cook now scuds across Bering 
Strait thirty-nine miles to the Chukchee land of Siberia 
in Asia. How he praises the accuracy of poor Be- 
• 



194 



VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 



ring's work along this coast : Bering, whose name had 
been a target for ridicule and contempt from the time 
of his death; whose death was declared a blunder; 
whose voyage was considered a failure; whose charts 
had been rejected and distorted by the learned men of 
the world. 




The Ice Islands. 



From the Chukchee villages of Asia, Cook sailed 
back to the American coast, passing north of Bering 
Straits directly in mid-channel. It is an odd thing, 
while very little ice-drift is met in Bering Sea, you 
have no sooner passed north of the straits than a white 
world surrounds you. Fog, ice, ice, fog — endlessly, 
with palisades of ice twelve feet high, east and west, 
far as the eye can see ! The crew amuse themselves 
alternately gathering driftwood for fuel, and hunting 



CAPTAIN COOK IN AMERICA 195 

walrus over the ice. It is in the North Pacific that the 
walrus attains its great size — nine teet in length, 
broader across its back than any animal known to the 
civilized world. These piebald yellow monsters lay 
wallowing in herds of hundreds on the ice-fields. At 
the edge lay always one on the watch; and no matter 
how dense the fog, these walrus herds on the ice, 
braying and roaring till the surf shook, acted as a 
fog-horn to Cook's ships, and kept them from being 
jammed in the ice-drift. Soon two-thirds of the furs 
got at Nootka had spoiled of rain-rot. The vessels 
were iced like ghost ships. Tack back and forward as 
they might, no passage opened through the ice. Sud- 
denly Cook found himself in shoal water, on a lee 
shore, long and low and shelving, with the ice drifting 
on his ships. He called the place Icy Cape. It was 
their farthest point north; and the third week of 
August they were compelled to scud south to escape 
the ice. Backing away toward Asia, he reached the 
North Cape there. It was almost September, In ac- 
cordance with the secret instructions. Cook turned 
south to winter at the Sandwich Islands, passing 
Serdze Kamen, where Bering had turned back in 
1728, East Cape on the Straits of Bering just opposite 
the American Prince of Wales, and St. Lawrence isl- 
ands where the ships anchored. 

Norton Sound was explored on the way back; and 
October saw Cook down at Oonalaska, where Ledyard 
was sent overland across the island to conduct the 



196 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

Russian traders to the English ships. Three Russians 
came to visit Cook. One averred that he had been 
v^'ith Bering on the expedition of 1741, and the rough 
adventurers seemed almost to worship the Dane's 
memory. Later came IsmylofF, chief factor of the 
Russian fur posts in Oonalaska, attended by a retinue 
of thirty native canoes, very suave as to manners, very 
polished and pompous v^^hen he w^as not too convivial, 
but very chary of any information to the English, 
vv^hose charts he examined with keenest interest, giving 
them to understand that the Empress of Russia had 
first claim to all those parts of the country, rising, 
quaffing a glass and bowing profoundly as he men- 
tioned the august name. " Friends and fellow-country- 
men glorious," the English were to the smooth-tongued 
Russian, as they drank each other's health. Learning 
that Cook was to visit Avacha Bay, Ismyloff proffered 
a letter of introduction to Major Behm, Russian com- 
mander of Kamchatka. Cook thought the letter one 
of commendation. It turned out otherwise. Fur 
traders, world over, always resented the coming of the 
explorer. Ismyloff was neither better nor worse than 
his kind.^ 

Heavy squalls pursued the ships all the way from 
Oonalaska, left on October 26, to the Sandwich Isl- 
ands, reached in the new year 1779. A thousand 
canoes of enthusiastic natives welcomed Cook back to 
the sunny islands of the Pacific. Before the explorer 

1 This is the Ismyloff who was marooned by Benyowsky. 



CAPTAIN COOK IN AMERICA 197 

could anchor, natives were swimming round the ship 
like shoals of fish. When Cook landed, the whole 
population prostrated itself at his feet as if he had 
been a god. It was a welcome change from the deso- 
late cold of the inhospitable north. 

Situated midway in the Pacific, the Sandwich Isl- 
ands were like an oasis in a watery waste to Cook's 
mariners. The ships had dropped anchor in the 
centre of a horn-shaped bay called Karakakooa, in 
Hawaii, about two miles from horn to horn. On the 
sandy flats of the north horn was the native village of 
Kowrowa : amid the cocoanut grove of the other horn, 
the village of Kakooa, with a w^ell and Morai, or sacred 
burying-ground, close by. Between the two villages 
alongshore ran a high ledge of black coral rocks. In 
all there were, perhaps, four hundred houses in the 
two villages, with a population of from two to three 
thousand warriors ; but the bay was the rallying place 
for the entire group of islands; and the islands num- 
bered in all several hundred thousand warriors. 

Picture, then, the scene to these wanderers of the 
northern seas : the long coral reef, wave-washed by 
bluest of seas; the little village and burying-ground 
and priests' houses nestling under the cocoanut grove 
at one end of the semicircular bay, the village where 
Terreeoboo, king of the island, dwelt on the long sand 
beach at the other end; and swimming through the 
water like shoals of fish, climbing over the ships' rig- 
ging like monkeys, crowding the decks of the Discovery 



198 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

so that the ship heeled over till young chief Pareea 
began tossing the intruders by the scuff of the neck 
back into the sea — hundreds, thousands, of half- 
naked, tawny-skinned savages welcoming the white 
men back to the islands discovered by them. Chief 
among the visitors to the ship was Koah, a little, old, 
emaciated, shifty-eyed priest with a wry neck and a 
scaly, leprous skin, who at once led the small boats 
ashore, driving the throngs back with a magic wand 
and drawing a mystic circle with his wizard stick round 
a piece of ground near the Morai, or burying-place, 
where the white men could erect their tents beside the 
cocoanut groves. The magic line was called a taboo. 
Past the tabooed line of the magic wand not a native 
would dare to go. Here Captain King, assisted by 
the young midshipman, Vancouver, landed with a 
guard of eight or ten mariners to overhaul the ships' 
masts, while the rest of the two crews obtained provi- 
sions by trade. 

Cook was carried off to the very centre of the Morai 
— a circular enclosure of solid stone with images and 
priests' houses at one end, the skulls of slain captives 
at the other. Here priests and people did the white 
explorer homage as to a god, sacrificing to him their 
most sacred animal — a strangled pig. 

All went well for the first few days. A white gun- 
ner, who died, was buried within the sacred enclosure 
of the Morai. The natives loaded the white men's 
boats with provisions. In ten days the wan, gaunt 



CAPTAIN COOK IN AMERICA 199 

sailors were so sleek and fat that even the generous 
entertainers had to laugh at the transformation. Old 
King Terreeoboo came clothed in a cloak of gaudy 
feathers with spears and daggers at his belt and a 
train of priestly retainers at his heels to pay a visit of 
state to Cook; and a guard of mariners was draw^n up 
at arms under the cocoanut grove to receive the visitor 
with fitting honor. When the king learned that Cook 
was to leave the bay early in February, a royal proc- 
lamation gathered presents for the ships; and Cook 
responded by a public display of fireworks. 

Now it is a sad fact that when a highly civilized 
people meet an uncivilized people, each race celebrates 
the occasion by appropriating all the evil qualities of 
the other. Vices, not virtues, are the first to fraternize. 
It was as unfair of Cook's crew to judge the islanders 
by the rabble swarming out to steal from the ships, 
as it would be for a newcomer to judge the people 
of New York by the pickpockets and under-world of 
the water front. And it must not be forgotten that 
the very quality that had made Cook successful — the 
quality to dare — was a danger to him here. The 
natives did not violate the sacred taboo, which the 
priest had drawn round the white men's quarters of 
the grove. It was the white men who violated it by 
going outside the limit; and the conduct of the white 
sailors for the sixteen days in port was neither better 
nor worse than the conduct of sailors to-day who go 
on a wild spree with the lowest elements of the harbor. 



200 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

The savages were quick to find out that the white 
gods were after all only men. The true story of what 
happened could hardly be written by Captain King, 
who finished Cook's journal; though one can read be- 
tween the lines King's fear of his commander's rash- 
ness. The facts of the case are given by the young 
American, John Ledyard, of Connecticut, who was 
corporal of marines and in the very thick of the fight. 
At the end of two weeks the white seamen were, 
perhaps, satiated of their own vices, or suffering from 
the sore head that results from prolonged spreeing. 
At all events the thieving, which had been condoned 
at first, was now punished by soundly flogging the 
natives. The old king courteously hinted it was time 
for the white men to go. The mate, who was loading 
masts and rudder back on board the Resolution, asked 
the savages to give him a hand. The islanders had 
lost respect for the white men of such flagrant vices. 
They pretended to give a helping hand, but only 
jostled the mate about in the crowd. The English- 
man lost his temper, struck out, and blustered. The 
shore rang with the shrill laughter of the throngs. In 
vain the chiefs of authority interposed. The com- 
mands to help the white men were answered by showers 
of stones directly inside the taboo. Ledyard was 
ordered out with a guard of sailors to protect the white 
men loading the Resolution. The guard was pelted 
black and blue. "There was nothing to do," relates 
Ledyard, "but move to new lands where our vices 



CAPTAIN COOK IN AMERICA 201 

were not known." At last all was in readiness to 
sail — one thing alone lacking — wood; and the 
white men dare not go inland for the needed wood. 

So far the entire blame rested on the sailors. Now 
Cook committed his cardinal error. With that very- 
dare and quickness to utilize every available means to 
an end — whether the end justified the means — 
Cook ordered his men ashore to seize the rail fence 
round the top of the stone burying-ground — the 
sacred Morai — as fuel for his ships. Out rushed the 
priests from the enclosure in dire distress. Was this 
their reward for protecting Cook with the wand of the 
sacred taboo? Two hatchets were offered the leading 
priest as pay. He spurned them as too loathsome to 
be touched. Leading the way, Cook ordered his men 
to break the fence down, and proffered three hatchets, 
thrusting them into the folds of the priest's garment. 
Pale and quivering with rage, the priest bade a slave 
remove the profaning iron. Down tumbled the fence ! 
Down the images on poles ! Down the skulls of the 
dead sacred to the savage as the sepulchre to the white 
man ! It may be said to the credit of the crew, that 
the men were thoroughly frightened at what they were 
ordered to do; but they were not too frightened to 
carry away the images as relics. Cook alone was 
blind to risk. As if to add the last straw to the Ha- 
waiians' endurance, when the ships unmoored and 
sailed out from the bay, where but two weeks before 
they had been so royally welcomed, they carried elop- 



202 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

ing wives and children from the lower classes of the 
two villages. 

It was one of the cases where retribution came so 
swift it was like a living Nemesis. It the weather had 
continued fair, doubtless wives and children would 
have been dumped off at some near harbor, the in- 
cident considered a joke, and the Englishmen gone 
merrily on their way; but a violent gale arose. Women 
and children were seized with a seasickness that was 
no joke. The decks resounded with such wails that 
Cook had to lie to in the storm, put off the pinnace, 
and send the visitors ashore. What sort of a tale they 
carried back, we may guess. Meanwhile the storm 
had snapped the foremast of the Resolution. As if 
rushing on his ruin. Cook steered back for the bay and 
anchored midway between the two villages. Again 
the tents were pitched beside the Morai under the 
cocoanut groves. Again the wand was drawn round 
the tenting place; but the white men had taught the 
savages that the taboo was no longer sacred. Where 
thousands had welcomed the ships before, not a soul 
now appeared. Not a canoe cut the waters. Not a 
voice broke the silence of the bay. 

The sailors were sour; Cook, angry. When the 
men rowed to the villages for fresh provisions, they 
were pelted with stones. When at night-time the 
savages came to the ships with fresh food, they asked 
higher prices and would take only daggers and knives 
in pay. Only by firing its great guns could the Dis^ 



CAPTAIN COOK IN AMERICA 203 

covery prevent forcible theft by the savages offering 
provisions; and in the scuffle of pursuit after one thief, 
Pareea — a chief most friendly to the whites — was 
knocked down by a white man's oar. "I am afraid," 
remarked Cook, "these people will compel me to use 
violent measures." As if to test the mettle of the 
tacit threat, Sunday, daybreak, February 14, revealed 
that the large rowboat of the Discovery had been 
stolen. 

When Captain King, who had charge of the guard 
repairing the masts over under the cocoanut grove 
came on board Sunday morning, he found Cook load- 
ing his gun, with a line of soldiers drawn up to go ashore 
in order to allure the ruler of the islands on board, and 
hold him as hostage for the restitution of the lost boat. 
Clerke, of the Discovery, was too far gone in consump- 
tion to take any part. Cook led the way on the pin- 
nace with Ledyard and six marines. Captain King 
followed in the launch with as many more. All the 
other small boats of the two ships were strung across 
the harbor from Kakooa, where the grove was, to 
Kowrowa, where the king dwelt, with orders to fire 
on any canoe trying to escape. 

Before the fearless leader, the savages prostrated 
themselves in the streets. Cook strode like a con- 
queror straight to the door of the king's abode. It 
was about nine in the morning. Old Terreeoboo — 
peace lover and lazy — was just awake and only too 
willing to go aboard with Cook as the easiest way out 



204 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

of the trouble about the stolen boat. But just here 
the high-handedness of Cook frustrated itself. That 
line of small boats stretched across the harbor began 
firing at an escaping canoe. A favorite chief was 
killed. Word of the killing came as the old king was 
at the water's edge to follow Cook ; and a wife caught 
him by the arm to drag him back. Suddenly a throng 
of a thousand surrounded the white men. Some one 
stabs at Phillips of the marines. Phillips's musket 
comes down butt-end on the head of the assailant. A 
spear is thrust in Cook's very face. He fires blank 
shot. The harmlessness of the shot only emboldens 
the savages. Women are seen hurrying off to the 
hills; men don their war mats. There is a rush of the 
white men to get positions along the water edge free 
for striking room; of the savages to prevent the whites' 
escape. A stone hits Cook. "What man did that.?" 
thunders Cook; and he shoots the culprit dead. Then 
the men in the boats lose their heads, and are pouring 
volleys of musketry into the crowds. 

"It is hopeless," mutters Cook to Phillips; but 
amid a shower of stones above the whooping of the 
savages, he turns with his back to the crowd, and 
shouts for the two small boats to cease firing and pull 
in for the marines. His caution came too late. 

His back is to his assailants. An arm reached out 
— a hand with a dagger; and the dagger rips quick as 
a flash under Cook's shoulder-blade. He fell without 
a groan, face in the water, and was hacked to pieces 



CAPTAIN COOK IN AMERICA 



205 



before the eyes of his men. Four marines had al- 
ready fallen. Phillips and Ledyard and the rest 
jumped into the sea and swam for their lives. The 
small boats were twenty yards out. Scarcely was 
Phillips in the nearest, when a wounded sailor, swim- 
ming for refuge, fainted and sank to the bottom. 




The Death of Cook. 



Though half stunned from a stone blow on his head 
and bleeding from a stab in the back, Phillips leaped 
to the rescue, dived to bottom, caught the exhausted 
sailor by the hair of the head and so snatched him into 
the boat. The dead and the arms of the fugitives had 
been deserted in the wild scramble for life. 

Meanwhile the masts of the Resolution^ guarded by 



2o6 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

only six marines, were exposed to the warriors of the 
other village at the cocoanut grove. Protected by the 
guns of the two ships under the direction of Clerke, 
who now became commander, masts and men were 
got aboard by noon. At four that afternoon, Cap- 
tain King rowed toward shore for Cook's body. He 
was met by the little leprous priest Koah, swimming 
halfway out. Though tears of sorrow were in Koah's 
treacherous red-rimmed eyes as he begged that Clerke 
and King might come ashore to parley. King judged 
it prudent to hold tightly on the priest's spear handle 
while the two embraced. 

Night after night for a week, the conch-shells blew 
their challenge of defiance to the white men. Fires 
rallying to war danced on the hillsides. Howls and 
shouts of derision echoed from the shore. The stealthy 
paddle of treacherous spies could be heard through 
the dark under the keel of the white men's ships. 
Cook's clothing, sword, hat, were waved in scorn under 
the sailors' faces. The women had hurried to the hills. 
The old king was hidden in a cave, where he could 
be reached only by a rope ladder; and emissary after 
emissary tried to lure the whites ashore. One pitch- 
dark night, paddles were heard under the keels. The 
sentinels fired ; but by lantern light two terrified faces 
appeared above the rail of the Resolution. Two 
frightened, trembling savages crawled over the deck, 
prostrated themselves at Clerke's feet, and slowly un- 
rolled a small wrapping of cloth that revealed a small 



CAPTAIN CQOK IN AMERICA 207 

piece of human flesh — the remains of Cook. Dead 
silence fell on the horrified crew. Then Clerke's 
stern answer was that unless the bones of Cook were 
brought to the ships, both native villages would be 
destroyed. The two savages were former friends of 
Cook's and warned the whites not to be allured on 
land, nor to trust Koah, the leper priest, on the ships. 
Again the conch-shells blew their challenge all 
night through the darkness. Again the war fires 
danced ; but next morning the guns of the Discovery 
were trained on Koah, when he tried to come on board. 
That day sailors were landed for water and set fire to 
the village of the cocoanut groves to drive assailants 
back. How quickly human nature may revert to the 
beast type ! When the white sailors returned from this 
skirmish, they carried back to the ships with them, the 
heads of two Hawaiians they had slain. By Saturday, 
the 20th, masts were in place and the boats ready to 
sail. Between ten and eleven o'clock in the morning, 
a long procession of people was seen filing slowly 
down the hills preceded by drummers and a white 
flag. Word was signalled that Cook's bones were on 
shore to be delivered. Clerke put out in a small boat 
to receive the dead commander's remains — from which 
all flesh had been burned. On Sunday, the 21st, the 
entire bay was tabooed. Not a native came out of the 
houses. Silence lay over the waters. The funeral 
service was read on board the Resolution^ and the 
coffin committed to the deep. 



2o8 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

A curious reception awaited the ships at Avacha 
Bay, Kamchatka, whence they now sailed. Ismy- 
loff's letter commending the explorers to the governor 
of Avacha Bay brought thirty Cossack soldiers floun- 
dering through the shore ice of Petropaulovsk under 
the protection of pointed cannon. Ismyloff, with fur 
trader's jealousy of intrusion, had warned the Russian 
commander that the English ships were pirates like 
Benyowsky, the Polish exile, who had lately sacked the 
garrisons of Kamchatka, stolen the ships, and sailed to 
America. However, when Cook's letters were carried 
overland to Bolcheresk, to Major Behm, the com- 
mander, all went well. The little log-thatched fort 
with its windows of talc opened wide doors to the far- 
travelled English. The Russian ladies of the fort 
donned their China silks. The samovars were set 
singing. English sailors gave presents of their grog 
to the Russians. Russian Cossacks presented their 
tobacco to the English, adding three such cheers as 
only Cossacks can give and a farewell song. 

In 1779 Clerke made one more attempt to pass 
through the northern ice-fields from Pacific to Atlantic ; 
but he accomplished nothing but to go over the ground 
explored the year before under Cook. On the 5th of 
July at ten p.m. in the lingering sunlight of northern 
latitudes, just as the boats were halfway through the 
Straits of Bering, the fog lifted, and for the first time 
in history — as far as known — the westernmost part 
of America, Cape Prince of Wales, and the eastern- 



CAPTAIN COOK IN AMERICA 209 

most part of Asia, East Cape, were simultaneously 
seen by white men. 

Finding it impossible to advance eastward, Clerke 
decided there was no Northeast Passage by way of 
the Pacific to the Atlantic; and on the 21st of July, 
to the cheers of his sailors, announced that the ships 
would turn back for England/ 

Poor Clerke died of consumption on the way, August 
22, 1779, only thirty-eight years of age, and was buried 
at Petropaulovsk beside La Croyere de I'lsle, who 
perished on the Bering expedition. The boats did not 
reach England till October of 1780. They had not 
won the reward of twenty thousand pounds; but they 
had charted a strange coast for a distance of three 
thousand five hundred miles, and paved the way for 
the vast commerce that now plies between Occident 
and Orient.^ 

1 The authority for Cook's adventures is, of course, his own journal, Vofage to the 
Pacific Ocean, London, 1784, supplemented by the letters and journals of men who 
were with him, like Ledyard, Vancouver, Portlock, and Dixon, and others. 

2 In reiterating the impossibility of finding a passage from ocean to ocean, either 
northeast or northwest, no disparagement is cast on such feats as that of Nordenskjold 
along the north of Asia, in the yeg^a in 1882. 

By *' passage " is meant a waterway practicable for ocean vessels, not for the ocean 
freak of a specially constructed Arctic vessel that dodges for a year or more among the 
ice-floes in an endeavor to pass from Atlantic to Pacific, or wee -versa. 



CHAPTER VIII 

1785-1792 

ROBERT GRAY, THE AMERICAN DISCOVERER OF 
THE COLUMBIA 

Boston Merchants, inspired by Cook's Voyages, outfit two Vessels 
under Kendrick and Gray for Discovery and Trade on the Pacific 
— Adventures of the First Ship to carry the American Flag around 
the World — Gray attacked by Indians at Tillamook Bay — His 
Discovery of the Columbia River on the Second Voyage — Fort 
Defence and the First American Ship built on the Pacific 

It is an odd thing that wherever French or British 
fur traders went to a new territory, they found the 
Indians referred to American traders, not as "Ameri- 
cans," but "Bostons" or " Bostonnais." The reason 
was plain. Boston merchants won a reputation as 
first to act. It was they who began a certain memo- 
rable "Boston Tea Party"; and before the rest of the 
world had recovered the shock of that event, these 
same merchants were planning to capture the trade of 
the Pacific Ocean, get possession of all the Pacific 
coast not already preempted by Spain, Russia, or 
England, and push American commerce across the 
Pacific to Asia. 



ROBERT GRAY 211 

What with slow printing-presses and slow travel, the 
account of Cook's voyages on the Pacific did not be- 
come generally known in the United States till 1785 or 

1786. Sitting round the library of Dr. Bulfinch's 
residence on Bowdoin Square in Boston one night in 

1787, were half a dozen adventurous spirits for whom 
Cook's account of the fur trade on the Pacific had an 
irresistible fascination. There was the doctor him- 
self. There was his son, Charles, of Harvard, just 
back from Europe and destined to become famous as 
an architect. There was Joseph Barrell, a prosperous 
merchant. There was John Derby, a shipmaster of 
Salem, a young man still, but who, nevertheless, had 
carried news of Lexington to England. Captain 
Crowell Hatch of Cambridge, Samuel Brown, a trader 
of Boston, and John Marden Pintard of the New York 
firm of Lewis Pintard Company were also of the little 
coterie. 

If Captain Cook's crew had sold one-third of a 
water-rotted cargo of otter furs in China for ten thou- 
sand dollars, why, these Boston men asked them- 
selves, could not ships fitted expressly for the fur 
trade capture a fortune in trade on that unoccupied 
strip of coast between Russian Alaska, on the north, 
and New Spain, on the south ? 

"There is a rich harvest to be reaped by those who 
are on the ground first out there," remarked Joseph 
Barrell. 

Then the thing was to be on the ground first — 



212 



VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 



that was the unanimous decision of the shrewd-headed 
men gathered in Bulfinch's study. 

The sequence was that Charles Bulfinch and the 
other five at once formed a partnership with a capital 




Charles Bulfinch. 

of fifty thousand dollars, divided into fourteen shares, 
for trade on the Pacific. This was ten years before 
Lewis and Clark reached the Columbia, almost twenty 
years before Astor had thought of his Pacific Company. 
The Cohimhia, a full-rigged two-decker, two hundred 
and twelve tons and eighty-three feet long, mounting 



ROBERT GRAY 213 

ten guns, which had been built fourteen years before 
on Hobart's Landing, North River, was immediately 
purchased. But a smaller ship to cruise about in- 
land waters and collect furs was also needed ; and for 
this purpose the partners bought the Lady fVashing- 
ton, a little sloop of ninety tons. Captain John Ken- 
drick of the merchant marine was chosen to command 
the Columbia, Robert Gray, a native of Rhode Island, 
who had served in the revolutionary navy, a friend of 
Kendrick's, to be master of the Lady fVashington. 
Kendrick was of middle age, cautious almost to in- 
decision; but Gray was younger with the daring char- 
acteristic of youth. 

In order to insure a good reception for the ships, 
letters were obtained from the federal government to 
foreign powers. Massachusetts furnished passports; 
and the Spanish minister to the United States gave 
letters to the viceroy of New Spain. Just how the in- 
formation of Boston plans to intrude on the Pacific 
coast was received by New Spain may be judged by 
the confidential commands at once issued from Santa 
Barbara to the Spanish officer at San Francisco: 
" Whenever there may arrive at the Port of San Fran- 
cisco, a ship named the Columbia said to belong to 
General Wanghington (^Washington) of the American 
States, under command of John Kendrick which sailed 
from Boston in September 1787 bound on a voyage of 
Discovery and of Examination of the Russian Estab- 
lishments on the Northern Coast of this Peninsula, you 



214 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

will cause said vessel to be secured together with her 
officers and crew." 

Orders were also given Kendrick and Gray to avoid 
offence to any foreign power, to treat the natives with 
kindness and Christianity, to obtain a cargo of furs on 
the American coast, to proceed with the same to China 
to be exchanged for a cargo of tea, and to return to 
Boston with the tea. The holds of the vessels were 
then stowed with every trinket that could appeal to 
the savage heart, beads, brass buttons, ear-rings, 
calico, tin mirrors, blankets, hunting-knives, copper 
kettles, iron chisels, snuff, tobacco. The crews were 
made up of the very best class of self-respecting sea- 
faring men. Woodruff, Kendrick's first mate, had been 
with Cook. Joseph Ingraham, the second mate, rose 
to become a captain. Robert Haswell, the third mate, 
was the son of a British naval officer. Richard Howe 
went as accountant; Dr. Roberts, as surgeon; Nutting, 
formerly a teacher, as astronomer; and Treat, as fur 
trader. Davis Coolidge was the first mate under Gray 
on the Lady Washington. 

Some heroes blunder into glory. These didn't. 
They deliberately set out with the full glory of their 
venture in view. Whatever the profit and loss account 
might show when they came back, they were well 
aware that they were attempting the very biggest and 
most venturesome thing the newly federated states had 
essayed in the way of exploration and trade. To 



ROBERT GRAY 



215 



commemorate the event, Joseph Barrell had medals 
struck in bronze and silver, showing the two vessels on 
one side, the names of the outfitters on the other. All 
Saturday afternoon sailors and officers came trundling 
down to the wharf, carpet bags and seamen's chests in 
tow, to be rowed out where the Columbia and Lady 
Washington lay at anchor. Boston was a Sabbath- 
observing city in those days; but even Boston could 
not keep away from the two ships heaving to the tide, 




'/^/S'BrowNjC'Bulpik ch.\ J 

1^1 J-Darby,C*Hatoh, 1^1 
vIl J-M-Pintaw>. /Vi 



which for the first time in American history were to 
sail around an unknown world. All Saturday night 
and Sunday morning the sailors scoured the decks 
and put berths shipshape; and all Sunday afternoon 
the visitors thronged the decks. By night outfitters 
and relatives were still on board. The medals of 
commemoration were handed round. Health and 
good luck and God-speed were drained to the heel 
taps. Songs resounded over the festive board. It 
was all "mirth and glee" writes one of the men on 



2i6 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

board. But by daybreak the ships had sHpped 
cables. The tide, that runs from round the under- 
world, raced bounding to meet them. A last dip of 
land behind; and on Monday, October i, 1787, the 
ships' prows were cleaving the waters of their fate. 

The course lay from Boston to Cape Verde Islands, 
from Verde Islands to the Falklands north of Cape 
Horn, round Cape Horn, up the west coast of South 
America, touching at Masafuera and Juan Fernan- 
dez, and thence, without pause, to the west coast 
of North America. At Cape Verde, Gray hired a 
valet, a colored boy, Marcus Lopez, destined to play 
an important part later. Crossing the equator, the 
sailors became hilarious, playing the usual pranks of 
ducking the men fresh to equatorial waters. So long 
did the ships rest at the Verde Islands, taking in fresh 
provisions, that it was January before the Falkland 
Islands were reached. Here Kendrick's caution be- 
came almost fear. He was averse to rounding the 
stormy Horn in winter. Roberts, the surgeon, and 
Woodruff, who had been with Cook, had become dis- 
gusted with Kendrick's indecision at Cape Verde, and 
left, presumably taking passage back on some foreign 
cruiser. Haswell, then, went over as first mate to 
Gray. Mountain seas and smashing gales assailed the 
ships from the time they headed for the Horn in April 
of 1788. The Columbia was tossed clear up on her 
beam ends, and sea after sea crashed over the little 



i 



ROBERT GRAY 217 

Lady Washington^ drenching everything below decks 
hke soap-suds in a rickety tub. Then came a hurri- 
cane of cold winds coating the ship in ice Hke glass, 
till the yard-arms looked like ghosts. Between scurvy 
and cold, there was not a sailor fit to man the 
decks. Somewhere down at 57° south, westward of 
the Horn, the smashing seas and driving winds 
separated the two ships; but as they headed north, 
bright skies and warm winds welcomed them to the 
Pacific. At Masafuera, off Chile, the ships would 
have landed for fresh water; but a tremendous back- 
wash of surf forewarned reefs; and the Lady Wash- 
ington stretched her sails for the welcome warm winds, 
and tacked with all speed to the north. A few weeks 
later, Kendrick was compelled to put in for Juan 
Fernandez to repair the Columbia and rest his scurvy- 
stricken crew. They were given all aid by the governor 
of the island, who was afterward reprimanded by the 
viceroy of Chile and degraded from office for helping 
these invaders of the South Seas. 

Meantime the little sloop, guided by the masterful 
and enthusiastic Gray, showed her heels to the sea. 
Soon a world of deep-sea, tropical wonders was about 
the American adventurers. The slime of medusa 
lights lined the long foam trail of the Lady Washington 
each night. Dolphins raced the ship, herd upon herd, 
their silver-white bodies aglisten in the sun. Schools of 
spermaceti-whales to the number of twenty at a time 
gambolled lazily around the prow. Stormy petrels, 



2i8 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

flying-fish, sea-lions, began to be seen as the boat passed 
north of the seas bordering New Spain. Gentle winds 
and clear sunlight favored the ship all June. The 
long, hard voyage began to be a summer holiday on 
warm, silver seas. The Lady Washirigton headed in- 
land, or where land should be, where Francis Drake 
two centuries before had reported that he had found 
New Albion. On August 2, somewhere near what is 
now Cape Mendocino, daylight revealed a rim of green 
forested hills above the silver sea. It was New Albion, 
north of New Spain, the strip of coast they had come 
round the world to find. Birds in myriads on myriads 
screamed the joy that the crew felt over their find ; 
but a frothy ripple told of reefs; and the Lady Wash- 
ington coasted parallel with the shore-line northward. 
On August 4, while the surf still broke with too great 
violence for a landing, a tiny speck was seen dancing 
over the waves like a bird. As the distance lessened, 
the speck grew and resolved itself to a dugout, or long 
canoe, carved with bizarre design stem and stern, 
painted gayly on the keel, carrying ten Indians, who 
blew birds' down of friendship in midair, threw open 
their arms without weapons, and made every sign of 
friendship. Captain Gray tossed them presents over 
the deck rail ; but the whistle of a gale through the 
riggings warned to keep off the rock shore; and the 
sloop's prow cut waves for the ofling. All night 
camp-fires and columns of smoke could be seen on 
shore, showing that the coast was inhabited. Under 



ROBERT GRAY 219 

clouds of sail, the sloop beat north for ten days, passing 
many savages, some of whom held up sea-otter to 
trade, others running along the shore brandishing 
their spears and shouting their war-cry. Two or three 
at a time were admitted on board to trade; but they 
evinced such treacherous distrust, holding knives ready 
to strike in their right hand, that Gray was cautious. 
During the adverse wind they had passed one open- 
ing on the coast that resembled the entrance to a river. 
Was this the fabled river of the West, that Indians said 
ran to the setting sun ? Away up in the Athabasca 
Country of Canadian wilds was another man, Alex- 
ander Mackenzie, setting to himself that same task of 
finding the great river of the West. Besides, in 1775, 
Heceta, the Spanish navigator from Monterey, had 
drifted close to this coast with a crew so stricken with 
scurvy not a man could hoist anchor or reef sails. 
Heceta thought he saw the entrance to a river; but 
was unable to come within twenty miles of the opening 
to verify his supposition. And now Gray's crew were 
on the watch for that supposed river; but more mun- 
dane things than glory had become pressing needs. 
Water was needed for drinking. The ship was out of 
firewood. The live stock must have hay; and in the 
crew of twelve, three-quarters were ill of the scurvy. 
These men must be taken ashore. Somewhere near 
what is now Cape Lookout, or Tillamook Bay, the 
rowboat was launched to sound, safe anchorage 
found, and the Lady Washington towed in harbor. 



220 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

The Lady Washington had anchored about half a 
mile from shore, but the curiously carved canoes came 
dancing over the waves in myriads. Gray noticed 
the natives were all armed with spears and knives, but 
they evinced great friendliness, bringing the crew bas- 
kets of berries and boiled crabs and salmon, in ex- 
change for brass buttons. They had anchored at 
ten on the night of August 14, and by the afternoon 
of the 15th the Indians were about the sloop in great 
numbers, trading otter skins for knives, axes, and 
other arms — which, in itself, ought to have put the 
crew on guard. When the white men went ashore 
for wood and water, the Indians stood silently by, 
weapons in hand, but offered no hostility. On the 
third day in harbor an old chief came on board fol- 
lowed by a great number of warriors, all armed. Gray 
kept careful guard, and the old Indian departed in 
possession of the stimulating fact that only a dozen 
hands manned the Lady Washington. Waiting for 
the tide the next afternoon, Haswell and Coolidge, the 
two mates, were digging clams on shore. Lopez, the 
black man, and seven of the crew were gathering grass 
for the stock. Only three men remained on the sloop 
with Captain Gray. Only two muskets and three or 
four cutlasses had been brought ashore. Haswell and 
Coolidge had their belt pistols and swords. The two 
mates approached the native village. The Indians 
began tossing spears, as Haswell thought, to amuse 
their visitors. That failing to inspire these white men, 



ROBERT GRAY 221 

rash as children, with fear, the Indians formed a ring, 
clubbed down their weapons in pantomime, and exe- 
cuted all the significant passes of the famous war-dance. 
"It chilled my veins," says Haswell; and the two 
mates had gone back to their clam digging, when there 
was a loud, angry shout. Glancing just where the 
rowboat lay rocking abreast the hay cutters, Haswell 
saw an Indian snatch at the cutlass of Lopez, the black, 
who had carelessly stuck it in the sand. With a wild 
halloo, the thief dashed for the woods, the black in 
pursuit, mad as a hornet. 

Haswell went straight to the chief and offered a 
reward for the return of the sword, or the black man. 
The old chief taciturnly signalled for Haswell to do 
his own rescuing. 

Theft and flight had both been part of a design to 
scatter the white men. "They see we are ill armed," 
remarked Haswell to the other. Bidding the boat row 
abreast with six of the hay cutters, the two mates and 
a third man ran along the beach in the direction Lopez 
had disappeared. A sudden turn into a grove of trees 
showed Lopez squirming mid a group of Indians, 
holding the thief by the neck and shouting for "help ! 
help!" No sooner had the three whites come on the 
scene, than the Indians plunged their knives in the 
boy's back. He stumbled, rose, staggered forward, 
then fell pierced by a flight of barbed arrows. Has- 
well had only time to see the hostiles fall on his body 
like a pack of wolves on prey, when more Indians 



222 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

emerged from the rear, and the whites were between 
two war parties under a shower of spears. A wild 
dash was made to head the fugitives off from shore. 
Haswell and Coohdge turned, pistols in hand, while the 
rowboat drew in. Another flight of arrows, when 
the mates let go a charge of pistol shot that dropped 
the foremost three Indians. Shouting for the rowers 
to fire, Haswell, Coolidge, and the sailor plunged into 
the water. To make matters worse, the sailor fainted 
from loss of blood, and the pursuers threw themselves 
into the water with a whoop. Hauling the wounded 
man in the boat, the whites rowed for dear life. The 
Indians then launched their canoes to pursue, but by 
this time Gray had the cannon of the Lady Washing- 
ton trained ashore, and three shots drove the hostiles 
scampering. For two days tide and wind and a thun- 
dering surf imprisoned Gray in Murderers' Harbor, 
where he had hoped to find the River of the West, 
but met only danger. All night the savages kept up 
their howling; but on the third day the wind veered. 
All sails set, the sloop scudded for the offing, glad to 
keep some distance between herself and such a danger- 
ous coast. 

The advantage of a small boat now became apparent. 
In the same quarter. Cook was compelled to keep out 
from the coast, and so reported there were no Straits 
of Fuca. By August 21 the sloop was again close 
enough to the rocky shore to sight the snowy, opal 




^ o 



D-, ^ 



o 

4) ^ 



r^ O 



ROBERT GRAY 223 

ranges of the Olympus Mountains. By August 26 
they had passed the wave-lashed rocks of Cape Flat- 
tery, and the mate records: "I am of opinion that 
the Straits of Fuca exist; for in the very latitude they 
are said to lie, the coast takes a bend, probably the 
entrance." 

By September, after frequent stops to trade v^ith the 
Indians, they were well abreast of Nootka, where Cook 
had been ten years before. A terrible ground-swell of 
surf and back-wash raged over projecting reefs. The 
Indians, here, knew English words enough to tell 
Gray that Nootka lay farther east, and that a Captain 
Meares was there with two vessels. A strange sail 
appeared inside the harbor. Gray thought it was the 
belated Columbia under Kendrick ; but a rowboat 
came out bearing Captain Meares himself, who break- 
fasted with the Americans on September 17, and had 
his long-boats tow the Lady Washington inside Nootka, 
where Gray was surprised to see two English snows 
under Portuguese colors, with a cannon-mounted gar- 
rison on shore, and a schooner of thirty tons, the North- 
west-America, all ready to be launched. This was 
the first ship built on the northwest coast. Gray 
himself later built the second. Amid salvos of cannon 
from the Lady Washington, the new fur vessel was 
launched from her skids; and in her honor Septem- 
ber 19 was observed as a holiday, Meares and 
Douglas, the two English captains, entertaining Gray 
and his officers. Meares had come from China in 



224 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

January, and during the summer had been up the 
Straits of Fuca, where another EngHsh captain, Bar- 
clay, had preceded him. Then Meares had gone 
south past Flattery, seeking in vain for the River of 
the West. Gales and breakers had driven him off 
the coast, and the very headland which hid the mouth 
of the Columbia, he had named Cape Disappointment, 
because he was so sure — in his own words — "that 
the river on the Spanish charts did not exist." He 
had also been down the coast to that Tillamook, or 
Cape Meares, where Gray's valet had been murdered. 
This was in July, a month before the assault on Gray; 
and if Haswell's report of Meares's cruelty be accepted 
— taking furs by force of arms — that may have ex- 
plained the hostility to the Americans. Meares was 
short of provisions to go to China, and Gray supplied 
them. In return Meares set his workmen to help 
clean the keel of the Lady Washington from barnacles; 
but the Englishman was a true fur trader to the core. 
In after-dinner talks, on the day of the launch, he tried 
to frighten the Americans away from the coast. Not 
fifty skins in a year were to be had, he said. Only 
the palisades and cannon protected him from the Ind- 
ians, of whom there were more than two thousand 
hostiles at Nootka, he reported. They could have 
his fort for firewood after he left. He had purchased 
the right to build it from the Indians. (Whether he ac- 
knowledged that he paid the Indians only two old pistols 
for this privilege, is not recorded.) At all events, it 



ROBERT GRAY 225 

would not be worth while for the Americans to remain 
on the coast. The Americans listened and smiled. 
Meares offered to carry any mail to China, and on the 
2d was towed out of port by Gray and the other Eng- 
lish captain, Douglas; but what was Gray's astonish- 
ment to receive the packet of mail back from Douglas. 
Meares had only pretended to carry it out in order 
that none of his crew might be bribed to take it, and 
then had sent it back by his partner, Douglas — true 
fur trader in checkmating the moves of rivals. Later 
on, when Meares's men were in desperate straits in this 
same port, they wondered that the Americans stood 
apart from the quarrel, if not actually siding with 
Spain. 

On September 23 appeared a strange sail on the 
offing — the Columbia, under Kendrick, sails down 
and draggled, spars storm-torn, two men dead of 
scurvy, and the crew all ill. 

October i celebrated a grand anniversary of the 
departure from Boston the previous year. At pre- 
cisely midday the Columbia boomed out thirteen guns. 
The sloop set the echoes rocketing with another thirteen. 
Douglas's ship roared out a salute of seven cannon 
shots, the fort on land six more, and the day was given 
up to hilarity, all hands dining on board the Columbia 
with such wild fowl as the best game woods in the 
world afforded, and copious supply of Spanish wines. 
Toasts were drunk to the first United States ship on 
the Pacific coast of America. On October 26 

Q 



226 



VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 



Douglas's ship and the fur trader, Northwest-America, 
were towed out, bound for the Sandwich Islands, and 
the Americans were left alone on the northwest 
coast, the tort having been demolished, and the logs 
turned over to Kendrick for firewood. 




h-Yf^^jB'^' 






Feather Cloak worn by a son of an Hawaiian Chief, at the celebration in 
honor of Gray's return. Photographed by courtesy of Mrs. Joy, the 
present owner. 

The winter of 1788- 1789 passed uneventfully except 
that the English were no sooner out of the harbor, 
than the Indians, who had kept askance of the 
Americans, came in flocks to trade. Inasmuch as 
Cook's name is a household word, world over, for what 
he did on the Pacific coast, and Gray's name barely 
known outside the city of Boston and the state of Ore- 



ROBERT GRAY 227 

gon, it is well to follow Gray's movements on the Lady 
Washington. March found him trading south of 
Nootka at Clayoquot, named Hancock, after the gov- 
ernor of Massachusetts. April saw him fifty miles 
up the Straits of Fuca, which Cook had said did not 
exist. Then he headed north again, touching at 
Nootka, where he found Douglas, the Englishman, 
had come back from the Sandwich Islands with the 
two ships. Passing out of Nootka at four in the after- 
noon of May I, he met a stately ship, all sails set, 
twenty guns pointed, under Spanish colors, gliding 
into the harbor. It was the flag-ship of Don Joseph 
Martinez, sent out to Bering Sea on a voyage of dis- 
covery, with a consort, and now entering Nootka to 
take possession in the name of Spain. Martinez ex- 
amined Gray's passports, learned that the Americans 
had no thought of laying claim to Nootka and, finding 
out about Douglas's ship inside the harbor, seemed to 
conclude that it would be wise to make friends of the 
Americans; and he presented Gray with wines, brandy, 
hams, and spices. 

"She will make a good prize," was his sententious 
remark to Gray about the English ship. 

Rounding northward, Gray met the companion ship 
of the Spanish commander. It will be remembered 
Cook missed proving that the west coast was a chain 
of islands. Since Cook's time, Barclay, an English- 
man, and Meares had been in the Straits of Fuca. 
Dixon had discovered Queen Charlotte Island; but 



228 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

the cruising of the little sloop, Lady Washington, cov- 
ered a greater area than Meares's, Barclay's and Dixon's 
ships together. First it rounded the north end of ^ 
Vancouver, proving this was island, not continent. ( 
These northern waters Gray called Derby Sound, after ' 
the outfitter. He then passed up between Queen 
Charlotte Island and the continent for two hundred 
miles, calling this island Washington. It was north- 
ward of Portland Canal, somewhere near what is now 
Wrangel, that the brave little sloop was caught in a ter- 
rific gale that raged over her for two hours, damaging 
masts and timbers so that Gray was compelled to turn 
back from what he called Distress Cove, for repairs at 
Nootka. At one point off Prince of Wales Island, 
the Indians willingly traded two hundred otter skins, ^ 
worth eight thousand dollars, for an old iron chisel. ( 

In the second week of June the sloop was back at 
Nootka, where Gray was not a little surprised to find 
the Spanish had erected a fort on Hog Island, seized 
Douglas's vessel, and only released her on condition 
that the little fur trader JSlorthiuest-America should 
become Spanish property on entering Nootka. 

Gray and Kendrick now exchanged ships. Gray, 
who had proved himself the swifter navigator, going on 
the Columbia, taking Haswell with him as mate. In 
return for one hundred otter skins, Gray was to carry 
the captured crew of the Northivcst-America to China 
for the Spaniards. On July 30, 1789, he left Van- 
couver Island. Stop was made at Hawaii for pro- 




John Derby, from the portrait by Gilbert Stuart, by courtesy of the 
owner. Dr. George B. Shattuck. 



ROBERT GRAY 229 

visions, and Atto, the son of a chief, boarded the 
Columbia to visit America. On December 6 the Co- 
lumbia deHvered her cargo of furs to Shav^ & Randall 
of Canton, receiving in exchange tea for Samuel Park- 
man, of Boston. It was February, 1790, before the 
Columbia was ready to sail for Boston, and dropping 
dov^n the river she passed the Lady fFashington, under 
Kendrick, in a cove where the gale hid her from Gray. 
On August II, 1790, after rounding Good Hope 
and touching at St. Helena, Gray entered Boston. It 
was the first time an American ship had gone round 
the world, almost fifty thousand miles, her log-book 
showed, and salvos of artillery thundered a welcome. 
General Lincoln, the port collector, was first on board 
to shake Gray's hand. The whole city of Boston was 
on the wharf to cheer him home, and the explorer 
walked up the streets side by side with Atto, the Ha- 
waiian boy, gorgeous in helmet and cloak of yellow 
plumage. Governor Hancock gave a public reception 
to Gray. The Columbia went to the shipyards to be 
overhauled, and the shareholders met. 

Owing to the glutting of the market at Canton, the 
sea-otter had not sold well. Practically the venture 
of these glory seekers had not ended profitably. The 
voyage had been at a loss. Derby and Pintard sold 
out to Barrell and Brown. But the lure of glory, or 
the wilds, or the venture of the unknown, was on the 
others. They decided to send the Columbia back at 



230 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

once on a second voyage. Perhaps, this time, she would 
find that great River of the West, which was to be to 
the Pacific coast what the Hudson was to the East. 

CooHdge and Ingraham now left the Columbia for 
ventures of their own to the Pacific. Haswell, whose 
diary, with Gray's log-book, gives all details of the 
voyage, went as first mate. George Davidson, an 
artist, Samuel Yendell, a carpenter, Haskins, an ac- 
countant of Barrell's Company, Joshua Caswell of 
Maiden, Abraham Waters, and John Boit were the 
new men to enlist for the venturesome voyage. The 
Columbia left Boston for a second voyage September 
28, 1790, and reached Clayoquot on the west coast of 
Vancouver Island on June 5, 1791. True to his 
nature, Gray lost not a day, but was off for the sea- 
otter harvest of the north, up Portland Canal near 
what is now Alaska. The dangers of the first voyage 
proved a holiday compared to this trip. Formerly, 
Gray had treated the Indians with kindness. Now, 
he found kindness was mistaken only for fear. 
Joshua Caswell, Barnes, and Folger had been sent up 
Portland Canal to reconnoitre. Whether ambushed 
or openly assaulted, they never returned. Only Cas- 
well's body was found, and buried on the beach. 
Later, when the grave was revisited, the body had 
been stolen, in all likelihood for cannibal rites, as no 
more degraded savages exist than those of this archi- 
pelago. Over on Queen Charlotte Island, Kendrick, 
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Map of Gray's two voyages, resulting in the discovery 
of the Columbia. 



232 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

was having his own time. One day, when all had gone 
below decks to rest, a taunting laugh was heard from 
the hatchway. Kendrick rushed above to find Indians 
scrambling over the decks of the Lady Washington 
like a nest of disgruntled hornets. A warrior flour- 
ished the key of the ammunition chest, which stood 
by the hatchway, in Kendrick's face with the words: 
"Key is mine! So is the ship!" 

If Kendrick had hesitated for the fraction of a 
second, all would have been lost, as on Astor's ship a 
few years later; but before the savages had time for 
any concerted signal, he had seized the speaker by 
the scruff of the neck, and tossed him into the sea. In 
a second every savage had scuttled over decks; but 
the scalp of Kendrick's son Solomon was found on 
the beach. Henceforth neither Kendrick nor Gray 
allowed more than ten savages on board at a time, 
and Kendrick at once headed south to take the harvest 
of furs to China. At Nootka things had gone from 
bad to worse between the English and the Spaniards. 
Though Kendrick bought great tracts of land from 
the Indian chiefs at Nootka for the price of a copper 
kettle, he judged it prudent to keep away from a Span- 
ish commander, whose mission it was to capture the 
ships of rival traders; so the American sloop moored 
in Clayoquot, south of Nootka, where Gray found 
Kendrick ready to sail for China by September. 

At Clayoquot was built the first American fort on 
the Pacific coast. Here Gray erected winter quarters. 



ROBERT GRAY 233 

The Columbia was unrigged and beached. The dense 
forest rang with the sound of the choppers. The enor- 
mous spruce, cedar, and fir trees were hewn into logs 
for several cabins and a barracks, the bark slabs being 
used as a palisade. Inside the main house were quar- 
ters for ten men. Loopholes punctured all sides of 
the house. Two cannon were mounted outside the 
window embrasures, one inside the gate or door. The 
post was named Fort Defence. Sentinels kept guard 
night and day. Military discipline was maintained, 
and divine service held each Sunday. On October 3 
timbers were laid for a new ship, to be called the Ad- 
venture, to collect furs for the Columbia. All the 
winter of 1 791-1792, Gray visited the Indians, sent 
medicines to their sick, allowed his men to go shoot- 
ing with them, and even nursed one ill chief inside the 
barracks; but he was most careful not to allow women 
or more than a few warriors inside the fort. 

What was his horror, then, on February 18, when 
Atto, the Hawaiian boy, came to him with news that 
the Indians, gathered to the number of two thousand, 
and armed with at least two hundred muskets got in 
trade, had planned the entire extermination of the 
whites. They had offered to make the Hawaiian boy 
a great chief among them if he would steal more am- 
munition for the Indians, wet all the priming of the 
white men's arms, and join the conspiracy to let the sav- 
ages get possession of fort and ship. In the history of 
American pathfinding, no explorer was ever in greater 



234 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

danger. Less than a score of whites against two 
thousand armed warriors ! Scarcely any ammunition 
had been brought in from the Columbia. All the 
swivels of the dismantled ship were lying on the bank. 
Gray instantly took advantage of high tide to get the 
ship on her sea legs, and out from the bank. Swivels 
were trundled with all speed back to the decks. For 
that night a guard watched the fort; but the next 
night, when the assault was expected, all hands were 
on board, provisions had been stowed in the hold, and 
small arms were loaded. The men were still to mid- 
waist in water, scraping barnacles from the keel, when 
a whoop sounded from the shore; but the change in 
the ship's position evidently upset the plans of the 
savages, for they withdrew. On the morning of the 
20th the woods were seen to be alive with ambushed 
men; and Haswell had the cannon loaded with can- 
ister fired into the woods. At eleven that very morn- 
ing, the chief, at the head of the plot, came to sell otter 
skins, and ask if some of the crew would not visit the 
village. Gray jerked the skins from his arms, and 
the rascal was over decks in terror of his life. That 
was the end of the plot. On the 23d the Adventure 
was launched, the second vessel built on the Pacific, 
the first American vessel built there at all; and by 
April 2 Haswell was ready to go north on her. Gray 
on the Columbia was going south to have another try 
at that great River of the West, which Spanish charts 
represented. 



ROBERT GRAY 235 

Without a doubt, if the river existed at all, it was 
down behind that Cape Disappointment where Meares 
had failed to go in, and Heceta been driven back. 
Just what Gray did between April 2 and May 7 
is a matter of guessing. Anyway, Captain George 
Vancouver sent out from England to settle the dispute 
about Nootka, at six o'clock on the morning of April 
29, just off the wave-lashed rocks of Cape Flattery, 
and within sight of Olympus's snowy sky-line, noticed 
a ship on the offing carrying American colors. He 
sent Mr. Puget and Mr. Menzies to inquire. 

They brought back word that Gray "had been oflF 
the mouth of a river in 46° 10' where the outset and 
reflux was so strong as to prevent entering for nine 
days," and that Gray had been fifty miles up the 
Straits of Fuca. 

Both facts were distasteful to Vancouver. He had 
wished to be the first to explore the Straits of Fuca, 
and on only April 27, had passed an opening which 
he pronounced inaccessible and not a river, certainly 
not a river worthy of his attention. Yet the exact 
words of Captain Bruno Heceta, the Spaniard, in 1775 
were: "These currents . . . cause me to believe that 
the place is the mouth of some great river. ... I did 
not enter and anchor there because ... if we let go 
the anchor, we had not enough men to get it up. 
(Thirty-five were down with scurvy.) ... At the dis- 
tance of three or four leagues, I lay too. I experienced 
heavy currents, which made it impossible to enter the 



236 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

bay, as I was far to leeward. . . . These currents, 
however, convince me that a great quantity of water 
rushed from this bay on the ebb of the tide." 

So the Spaniard failed to enter, and now the 
great English navigator went on his way, convinced 
there was no River of the West; but Robert Gray 
headed back south determined to find what lay be- 
hind the tremendous crash of breakers and sand 
bar. On the 7th of May, the rowboat towed the 
Columbia into what is now known as Gray's Harbor, 
where he opened trade with the Indians, and was pres- 
ently so boldly overrun by them, that he was compelled 
to fire into their canoes, killing seven. Putting out 
from this harbor on the loth, he steered south, keeping 
close ashore, and was rewarded at four o'clock on the 
morning of the nth by hearing a tide-rip like thunder 
and seeing an ocean of waters crashing sheer over sand 
bar and reef with a cataract of foam in midair from 
the drive of colliding waves. Milky waters tinged the 
sea as of inland streams. Gray had found the river, 
but could he enter ? A gentle wind, straight as a die, 
was driving direct ashore. Gray waited till the tide 
seemed to lift or deepen the waters of the reef, then 
at eight in the morning, all sails set like a bird on wing, 
drove straight for the narrow entrance between reefs 
and sand. Once across the bar, he saw the mouth 
of a magnificent river of fresh water. He had found 
the River of the West. 

Gray describes the memorable event in these simple 



ROBERT GRAY 



237 



words: "May nth ... at four a.m. saw the entrance 
of our desired port bearing east-southeast, distance six 
leagues ... at eight a.m. being a httle to windward of 
the entrance of the harbor, bore away, and ran in east- 
southeast between the breakers. . . . When we were 
over the bar, we found this to be a large river of fresh 




A View of the Columbia River. 



water, up which we steered. Many canoes came 
alongside. At one p.m. came to (anchor). . . ." 

By the 14th, Gray had ascended the river twenty 
or thirty miles from the sea, but was compelled to 
turn, as he had taken a shallow channel. Dropping 
down with the tide, he anchored on the 19th and went 
ashore, where he planted coins under a tree, took pos- 



238 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

session in the name of the United States, and named 
the river "Columbia." On the 20th, he crossed the 
bar and was out again on the Pacific. The most of 
men would have rested, satisfied with half he had 
done. Not so Gray. He headed the Columbia north 
again for the summer's trade in what is now known as 
southern Alaska. Only damages to the Columbia 
drove her down to Nootka in July, where Don Quadra, 
the new Spanish commander, and Captain Van- 
couver were in conference over those English ships 
seized by Martinez. To Quadra, Gray sold the little 
Adventure, pioneer of American shipbuilding on the 
Pacific, for seventy-five otter skins. From Spanish 
sources it is learned Gray's cargo had over three 
thousand otter skins, and fifteen thousand other pel- 
tries ; so the second voyage may have made up for 
the loss of the first. 

On October 3 the Columbia left America for 
China ; and on July 29, 1793, came to the home 
harbor of Boston. Sometime between 1806 and 1809, 
Gray died in South Carolina, a poor man. It is doubt- 
ful if his widow's petition to Congress ever materialized 
in a reward for any of his descendants. Kendrick, 
eclipsed by his brilliant assistant, was accidentally 
killed in Hawaii by the wad of a gun fired by a British 
vessel to salute the Lady Washington. From the 
date 1793 or 1795 the little sloop drops out of sea- 
faring annals. 

What is Gray's place among pathfinders and naval 



ROBERT GRAY 



^39 



heroes ? Where does his hfe's record leave him ? It 
was not spectacular work. It was not work backed 
by a government, like Bering's or Cook's. It was 
the work of an individual adventurer, like Radis- 
son east of the Rockies. Gray was a man who did 
much and said little. He was not accompanied by a 




At the Mouth of the Columbia River. 



host of scientists to herald his fame to the world. 
Judged solely by results, what did he accomplish ^ 
The same for the United States that Cook did for Eng- 
land. He led the way for the American flag around 
the world. Measuring purely by distance, his ship's 
log would compare well with Cook's or Vancouver's. 
The same part of the Pacific coast, which they ex- 



240 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

plored, he explored, except that he did not go to north- 
ern Alaska; and he compensated for that by discovering 
the great river, which they both said had no existence. 
And yet, v^ho that know^s of Cook and Vancouver, know^s 
as much of Gray ? Authentic histories are still written 
that speak of Gray's discovery doubtfully. Gray did 
much, but said little; and the world is prone to take 
a man at his own valuation. Yet if the world places 
Cook and Vancouver in the niches of naval heroes, 
Gray must be placed between them. 

There is a curious human side to the story of these 
glory seekers, too. Bulfinch was so delighted over the 
discovery of the Columbia, that he had his daughter 
christened "Columbia," to which the young lady ob- 
jected in later years, so that the name was dropped. 
In commemoration of Don Quadra's kindness in re- 
pairing the ship Columbia, Gray named one of his 
children Quadra. The curios brought back by In- 
graham on the first voyage were donated to Harvard. 
Descendants of Gray still have the pictures drawn by 
Davidson and Haswell on the second voyage. The 
sea chest carried round the world by Gray now rests in 
the keeping of an historical society in Portland ; and the 
feather cloak worn up the street by the boy Atto, when 
he marched in the procession with Gray, is treasured 
in Boston.^ 

^ Much concerning Gray's voyages can be found in the accounts of contemporary 
navigators like Meares and Vancouver ; but the essential facts of the voyages are 
obtainable from the records of Gray's log-book, and of diaries kept by his officers. 



ROBERT GRAY 241 

Gray's log-book itself seems to have passed into the hands of the Bulfinch family. 
From a copy of the original, Thomas Bulfinch reprinted the exact entry of the discovery 
on May 1 1, 1792, in his Oregon and Eldorado, a Romance of the Ri-vers, Boston, 1 866. 
The log-book is now on file in the Department of State, Washington ; but that part from 
which Bulfinch made his extract is missing j nor is it known where this section was lost ; 
as it was in 181 6 that Mr. Charles Bulfinch made a copy of this section from the orig- 
inal. Greenhow's Oregon and California, Boston, 1 844, issued under the auspices of 
Congress, gives the log-book in full fi-om May 7th to May 21st. Hubert Howe Ban- 
croft in his Northiveu Coast, Volume I, 1890, reproduces the diary in full of Haswell 
for both voyages. It is from Haswell that the fullest account of the Indian plots are 
obtained; but at the time of the discovery of the Columbia, Haswell was on the little 
sloop Adventure, and what he reports is from hearsay. His words in the entry of June 
14 are : "They (the Columbia') had very disagreeable weather but . . . good success. 
. . . They discovered a harbor in latitude 46° 53' north. . . . This is Gray's 
Harbor. Here they were attacked by the natives, and the savages had a considerable 
slaughter made among them. They next entered Columbia River, and went up it 
about thirty miles, and doubted not it was navigable upwards of a hundred miles. . . . 
The ship {^Columbia) during the cruise had collected upwards of seven hundred sea-otter 
skins and fifteen thousand skins of other species." The pictures made by Davidson, the 
artist, on the second voyage, owned by collectors in Boston, tell their own story. From 
all these sources, and from the descendants of Gray, the Rev. Edward G. Porter col- 
lected data for his lecture before the Massachusetts Historical Society, afterward published 
in the Neiv England Maga-zine of June, 1892. The Massachusetts Historical Pro- 
ceedings for 1892 have, by all odds, the most complete collection of data bearing on 
Gray. The archives include the medal and three of Davidson's drawings, also papers 
relating to the Columbia presented by Barrell. The Salem Institute has also some data 
on the ships. The Massachusetts Proceedings for 1 869-1 870 also give, from the 
Archives of California, the letter of Governor Don Pedro Fages of Santa Barbara to 
Don Josef Arguello of San Francisco, warning the latter against the American navi- 
gators. Greenhow obtained from the Hydrographical Office at Madrid the report of 
Captain Bruno Heceta's voyage in 1775, when he sighted the mouth of a river sup- 
posed to be the Columbia. 



CHAPTER IX 

1778-1790 

JOHN LEDYARD, THE FORERUNNER OF LEWIS AND 

CLARK 

A New England Ne'er-do-well, turned from the Door of Rich Rela- 
tives, joins Cook's Expedition to America — Adventure among the 
Russians of Oonalaska — Useless Endeavor to interest New Eng- 
land Merchants in Fur Trade -^ A Soldier of Fortune in Paris, he 
meets Jefferson and Paul Jones and outlines Exploration of Western 
America — Succeeds in crossing Siberia alone on the Way to America, 
but is thwarted by Russian Fur Traders 

When his relatives banged the door in his face, 
turning him destitute in the streets of London, if John 
Ledyard could have foreseen that the act would in- 
directly lead to the Lewis and Clark exploration of the 
great region between the Mississippi and the Pacific, 
he would doubtless have regarded the unkindness as 
Dick Whittington did the cat, that led on to fortune. 
He had been a dreamer from the time he was born in 
Groton, opposite New London, Connecticut — the 
kind of a dreamer whose moonshine lights the path of 
other men to success; but his wildest dreams never 
dared the bigness of an empire many times greater 
than the original states of the Union. 

242 



JOHN LEDYARD 243 

Instead he had landed at Plymouth, ragged, not a 
farthing in the bottom of his pockets, not a farthing's 
possession on earth but his hopes. Those hopes were 
to reach rich relatives in London, who might give him 
a lift to the first rung of the world's climbers. He was 
twenty-five years old. He had burned his ships be- 
hind him. That is, he had disappointed all his rela- 
tives in America so thoroughly that he could never 
again turn for help to the home hands. 

They had designed him for a profession, these New 
England friends. If Nature had designed him for the 
same thing, it would have been all right; but she 
hadn't. The son of a widowed mother, the love of 
the sea, of pathless places, of what is just out of sight 
over the dip of the horizon, was in his blood from his 
father's side. Friends thought he should be well satis- 
fied when he was sent to live with his grandfather at 
Hartford and apprenticed to the law; but John Led- 
yard hated the pettifogging of the law, hated roofed- 
over, walled-in life, wanted the kind of life where men 
do things, not just dicker, and philosophize, and com- 
promise over the fag-ends of things other men have 
done. At twenty-one years of age, without any of the 
prospects that lure the prudent soul, he threw over all 
idea of law.^ 

Friends were aghast. Manifestly, the boy had 

^ The world owes all knowledge of Ledyard's intimate life to Jared Sparks, who 
compiled his life of Ledyard from journals and correspondence collected by Dr. Ledyard 
and Henry Seymour of Hartford. 



244 



VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 



brains. He devoured information, absorbed facts like 
an encyclopaedia, and observed everything. The Greek 




Ledyard in his dugout, from a contemporaneous print. 

Testament and Ovid were his companions; yet he re- 
belled at the immured existence of the scholar. At 
that time (1772), Dartmouth was the rendezvous of 



JOHN LEDYARD 245 

missionaries to the Indians. The college itself held 
lectures to the singing of the winds through the forests 
around it. The blowing of a conch-shell called to 
lessons; and a sort of wildwood piety pervaded the 
atmosphere. Urged by his mother, Ledyard made one 
more honest attempt to fit his life to a stereotyped 
form, and came to study at Dartmouth for the mission- 
ary's career. 

It was not a success. When he thought to get a 
foretaste of the missionary vocation by making a dug- 
out and floating down the whole length of Connecticut 
River, one hundred and forty miles, the scholarly 
professors were shocked. And when he disappeared 
for four months to make a farther test by living among 
the Mohawks, the faculty was furious. His friends 
gave him up as hopeless, a ne'er-do-well; and Ledyard 
gave over the farce of trying to live according to other 
men's patterns. 

What now determined him was what directs the 
most of lives — need for bread and butter. He be- 
came a common sailor on the ship of a friend in New 
London, and at twenty-five landed in Plymouth, light 
of heart as he was light of purse. The world was an 
oyster to be opened by his own free lance; and up he 
tramped from Plymouth to London in company with 
an Irishman penniless as himself, gay as a lark, to the 
world's great capital with the world's great prizes for 
those with the wits to win them. A carriage with driver 



246 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

and footman in livery wearing the armorial design of 
his own Ledyard ancestors rolled past in the street. 
He ran to the coachman, asked the address, and pre- 
sented himself at the door of the ancestral Ledyards, 
hope beating high. The relationship was to be the key 
to open all doors. And the door of the ancestral Led- 
yards was shut in his face. The father was out. The 
son put no stock in the story of the ragged stranger. 
He did not even know that Ledyards existed in Amer- 
ica. What was to hinder any common tramp trump- 
ing up such a story ? Where were the tattered fellow's 
proofs .'' Ledyard came away with just enough whole- 
some human rage to keep him from sinking to despair, 
or to what is more unmanning, self-pity. He had 
failed before, through trying to frame his life to other 
men's plans. He had failed now, through trying to 
win success through other men's efforts — a barnacle 
clinging to the hull of some craft freighted with for- 
tune. Perhaps, too, he fairly and squarely faced the 
fact that if he was to be one whit different from the 
beggar for whom he had been mistaken, he must 
build his own life solely and wholly on his own efforts. 
On he wandered, the roar of the great city's activi- 
ties rolling past him in a tide. His rage had time to 
cool. Afternoon, twilight, dark; and still the tide 
rolled past him; past him because like a stranded hull 
rotting for lack of use, he had put himself outside the 
tide of human effort. He must build up his own 
career. That was the fact he had wrested out of his 



JOHN LEDYARD 247 

rage; but unless his abilities were to rot in some stag- 
nant pool, he must launch out on the great tide of 
human work. Before he had taken that resolution, 
the roar of the city had been terrifying — a tide that 
might swamp. Now, the thunder of the world's traffic 
was a shout of triumph. He would launch out, let the 
tide carry him where it might. 

All London was resounding with the project of 
Cook's third voyage round the world — the voyage 
that was to settle forever how far America projected 
into the Pacific. Recruits were being mustered for 
the voyage. It came to Ledyard in an inspiration — 
the new field for his efforts, the call of the sea that 
paved a golden path around the world, the freedom for 
shoulder-swing to do all that a man was worth. Quick 
as flash, he was off — going zuith the tide now, not a dere- 
lict, not a stranded hull — off to shave, and wash, and 
respectable-ize, in order to apply as a recruit with Cook. 

In the dark, soinewhere near the sailors' mean lodg- 
ings, a hand touched him. He turned; it was the 
rich man's son, come profuse of apologies: his father 
had returned; father and son begged to proffer both 
financial aid and hospitality — Ledyard cut him short 
with a terse but forcible invitation to go his own way. 
That the unknown colonial at once received a berth 
with Cook as corporal of marines, when half the young 
men of England with influence to back their applica- 
tions were eager to join the voyage, speaks well for 
the sincerity of the new enthusiasm. 



248 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

Cook left England in midsummer of 1776. He 
sighted the Pacific coast, northward of what is now 
San Francisco, in the spring of 1778. Ledyard was 
the first American to see the land that lay beyond the 
Rockies. It was not a narrow strip as men had 
thought, but a broad belt a thousand miles long by a 
thousand broad, an unclaimed world; for storms 
drove Cook oflPshore here; and the English discoverer 
did not land till abreast of British America. 

At Nootka thousands of Indians flocked round the 
two vessels to trade. For some trinkets of glass beads 
and iron, Ledyard obtained one thousand five hundred 
skins for Cook. Among the Indians, too, he saw 
brass trinkets, that must have come all the way from 
New Spain on the south, or from the Hudson's Bay 
Fur Company on the east. What were the merchants 
of New York and Philadelphia doing, that their ships 
were not here reaping a harvest of wealth in furs ^ If 
this were the outermost bound of Louisiana, Louisiana 
might some day be a part of the colonies now strug- 
gling for their liberties; and Ledyard's imagination 
took one of those leaps that win a man the reputation 
of a fool among his contemporaries, a hero to future 
generations. " If it was necessary that a European 
should discover the existence of the continent," he 
afterward wrote, "in the name of Amor Patriae let a 
native explore its resources and boundaries. It is my 
wish to be the man." 

Cook's ships passed north to Oonalaska. Only 



JOHN LEDYARD 249 

twenty-five years before, the Indians of Oonalaska had 
massacred every v^hite settlement on the island. Cook 
w^ished to send a message to the Russian fur traders. 
Not many men could be risked from the ship. Fired 
v^ith the ambition to know^ more of the coast which he 
had determined to explore, Ledyard volunteered to go 
for the Russians with two Indian guides. The pace 
was set at an ambling run over rocks that had cut 
Ledyard's boots to tatters before nightfall. He was 
quite unarmed; and just at dark the way seemed to 
end at a sandy shore, where the waves were already 
chopping over on the rising tide, and spiral columns of 
smoke betrayed the underground mud huts of those 
very Indian villages that had massacred the Russians a 
quarter of a century before. The guides had dived 
somewhere underground and, while Ledyard stood non- 
plussed, came running back carrying a light skin boat 
which they launched. It was made of oiled walrus 
hide stretched like a drum completely round whale- 
bones, except for two manholes in the top for the 
rowers. Perpheela, the guide, signalled Ledyard to 
embark; and before the white man could solve the 
problem of how three men were to sit in two man- 
holes, he was seized head and heels, and bundled clear 
through a manhole, lying full length imprisoned like 
Jonah in the whale. Then the swish of dipping 
paddles, of the cold waves above and beneath, shutout 
by parchment thin as tissue paper, told Ledyard that 
he was being carried out to sea, spite of dark and storm, 



250 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

in a craft light as an air-blown bladder, that bounced 
forward, through, under, over the waves, undrownable 
as a fish. 

There was nothing to do but lie still. The slightest 
motion might have ruptured the thin skin keel. On 
he was borne through the dark, the first American in 
history to travel by a submarine. At the end of what 
seemed ages — it could not have been more than two 
hours — after a deal of bouncing to the rising storm 
with no sound but the whistling of wind and rush of 
mountain seas, the keel suddenly grated pebbles. Star- 
light came through the vacated manholes; but be- 
fore Ledyard could jump out, the boat was hoisted on 
the shoulders of four men, and carried on a run over- 
land. The creak of a door slammed open. A bump 
as the boat dumped down to soft floor; and Ledyard 
was dazzled by a glare of light to find himself in the 
mess room of the Russian barracks on Captain Harbor, 
in the presence of two bearded Russian hunters gasping 
speechless with surprise to see a man emerging from 
the manhole like a newly hatched chicken from an 

egg- 
Fur rugs covered the floor, the walls, the benches, 

the berth beds lining the sides of the barnlike Rus- 
sian barracks. The w^indows were of oiled bladder 
skin; the lamps, whale-oil in stone basins with skin 
for wick. Arms were stacked in the corner. The two 
Russians had been sitting down to a supper of boiled 
salmon, when Ledyard made his unannounced en- 



JOHN LEDYARD 251 

trance. By signs he explained that Captain Cook's 
ships were at a near harbor and that the EngHsh com- 
mander desired to confer with IsmylofF, chief factor of 
the Russians. Rising, kissing their hands ceremo- 
niously as they mentioned the august name and taking 
off their fur caps, the Russians made solemn answer 
that all these parts, with a circumambient wave, 
belonged to the Empress of Russia; that they were her 
subjects — with more kissing of the hands. Russia 
did not want foreigners spying on her hunting-grounds. 
Nevertheless, Ledyard was given a present of fresh 
Chinese silk underwear, treated to the hottest Russian 
brandy in the barracks, and put comfortably to bed on 
a couch of otter skins. From his bed, he saw the Ind- 
ians crowd in for evening services before a little Rus- 
sian crucifix, the two traders leading prayers. These 
were the tribes, whom the Russians had hunted with 
dogs fifty years before; and who in turn had slain all 
Russians on the Island. A better understanding now 
prevailed. 

In the morning Ledyard looked over the fur estab- 
lishment; galliots, cannon-mounted in the harbor for 
refuge in case of attack; the huge lemon-yellow, red- 
roofed store-room that might serve as barracks or fort 
for a hundred men; the brigades of eight, of nine, of 
eleven hundred Indian hunters sailing the surfs under 
the leadership of Ismyloff, the chief factor. Oonalaska 
was the very centre of the sea-otter hunt. Here, 
eighteen thousand otter a year were taken. At once, 



252 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

Ledyard realized how he could pay the cost of explor- 
ing that unclaimed world between New Spain and 
Alaska: by turning fur trader as Radisson, and La 
Salle, and the other explorers had done. 

Ismyloff himself, who had been out with his brigade 
when Ledyard came, went to visit the Englishman; 
but Ismyloff had little to say, little of Benyowsky, the 
Polish pirate, who had marooned him; less of Alaska; 
and the reason for taciturnity was plain. The Russian 
fur traders were forming a monopoly. They told no 
secrets to the world. They wanted no intruders on 
their hunting-ground. Could Ledyard have known 
that the surly, bearded Russian was to blast his new- 
born ambitions; could Ismyloff have guessed that the 
eager, young, beardless corporal of marines was in- 
directly to be the means of wresting the Pacific coast 
from Russia — each might have smiled at the tricks of 
destiny. 

Ledyard had two more years to serve in the British 
navy when he returned from Cook's voyage. By an- 
other trick of destiny he was sent out on a battle ship 
to fight against his native country in the Revolutionary 
War. It was a time when men wore patriotic coats of 
many colors. His ship lay at anchor off Long Island. 
He had not seen his mother for seven years, but knew 
that the war had reduced her to opening a lodging 
house for British ofl'icers. Asking for a week's fur- 
lough, Ledyard went ashore, proceeded to his mother's 



JOHN LEDYARD 253 

house, knocked at the door, and was taken as a lodger 
by her without being recognized, which was, perhaps, 
as well; for the house was full of British spies. Led- 
yard waited till night. Then he went to her private 
apartments and found her reading with the broad- 
rimmed, horn-framed spectacles of those days. He 
took her hands. "Look at me," he said. One glance 
was enough. Then he shut the door; and the door 
remains shut to the world on what happened there. 

That was the end of British soldiering for Ledyard. 
He never returned to the marines. He betook himself 
to Hartford, where he wrote an account of Cook's 
voyage. Then he set himself to move heaven and 
earth for a ship to explore that unknown coast from 
New Spain to Alaska. This was ten years before 
Robert Gray of Boston had discovered the Colum- 
bia; twenty years before the United States thought 
of buying Louisiana, twenty-five years before Lewis 
and Clark reached the Pacific. Many influences 
worked against him. Times were troublous. The 
country had not recovered sufficiently from the throes 
of the Revolution to think of expanding territory. 
Individually and collectively, the nation was des- 
perately poor. As for private sailing masters, they 
smiled at Ledyard's enthusiasm. An unclaimed world ^ 
What did they care ? Where was the money in a 
venture to the Pacific ? When Ledyard told how 
Russia was reaping a yearly harvest of millions in furs, 
even his old friend. Captain Deshon, whose boat had 



254 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

carried him to Plymouth, grew chary of such roseate 
prospects. It was characteristic of Ledyard that the 
harder the difficulties proved, the harder grew his 
determination to overcome. He was up against the 
impossible, and instead of desisting, gritted his teeth, 
determined to smash a breach through the wall of the 
impossible, or smash himself trying. For six months 
he besieged leading men in New York and Philadel- 
phia, outlining his plans, meeting arguments, giv- 
ing proofs for all he said of Pacific wealth, holding 
conference after conference. Robert Morris entered 
enthusiastically into the scheme ; but what with 
shipmasters' reluctance to embark on such a dan- 
gerous voyage and the general scarcity of funds, the 
patience of both Ledyard and Morris became ex- 
hausted. Ledyard's savings had meanwhile dwindled 
down to $4.27. 

In Europe, Cook's voyage was beginning to create 
a stir. The Russian government had projected an 
expedition to the Pacific under Joseph Billings, Cook's 
assistant astronomer. These Russian plans aimed at 
no less than dominance on the Pacific. Forts were 
to be built in California and Hawaii. In England and 
India, private adventurers, Portlock, Dixon, Meares, 
Barclay, were fitting out ships for Pacific trade. Some 
one advised Ledyard to attempt his venture in the 
country that had helped America in the Revolution, 
France; and to France he sailed with money loaned by 
Mr. Sands of New York, in 1784. 



JOHN LEDYARD 255 

In Paris Ledyard met two of the most remarkable 
men in American history, Paul Jones, the naval hero, 
and Jefferson. To them both he told the marvels of 
Pacific wealth, and both were far-sighted enough to 
share his dreams. It was now that Jefferson began 
to formulate those plans that Lewis and Clark after- 
ward carried out. The season was too late for a 
voyage this year, but Paul Jones loaned Ledyard 
money and arranged to take out a ship of four hundred 
tons the following year. The two actually went over 
every detail together. Jones was to carry the furs to 
China, Ledyard with assistants, surgeon, and twenty 
soldiers to remain at the fur post and explore. 

But Paul Jones was counting on the support of the 
American government; and when he found that the 
government considered Ledyard's promises visionary, 
he threw the venture over in a pique. 

Was Ledyard beaten ^ Jefferson and he talked 
over the project day after day. Ledyard was willing 
to tramp it across the two Siberias on foot, and to 
chance over the Pacific Ocean in a Russian fur-trading 
vessel, if Jefferson could obtain permission from the 
Russian Empress. Meanwhile, true soldier of fortune, 
without money, or influence, he lived on terms of in- 
timacy with the fashion of Paris. 

"I have but five French crowns," he wrote a friend. 
"The Fitzhughes (fellow-roomers) haven't money for 
tobacco. Such a set of moneyless rascals never 



256 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

appeared since the days of FalstafF.'* Again — "Sir 
James Hall, on his way from Paris to Cherbourg, 
stopped his coach at our door. I was in bed, but 
having flung on my robe de chambre, met him at the 
door. ... In walking across the chamber, he laugh- 
ingly put his hand on a six livre piece and a louis d'or 
on my table, and with a blush asked me how I was in 
the money way. Blushes beget blushes. ' If fifteen 
guineas,' said he, 'will be of any service to you, here 
they are. You have my address in London.' " 

While waiting the passports from the Empress of 
Russia, he was invited by Sir James Hall to try his 
luck in England. The very daring of the wild attempt 
to cross Siberia and America alone appealed to the Eng- 
lish. Half a dozen men, friends of Cook, took the ven- 
ture up, and Ledyard found himself in the odd position 
of being offered a boat by the country whose navy he 
had deserted. Perhaps because of that desertion all 
news of the project was kept very quiet. A small ship 
had slipped down the Thames for equipments, when the 
government got wind of it. Whether the great Hud- 
son's Bay Company of England opposed the expedi- 
tion as intrusion on its fur preserve, or the English 
government objected to an American conducting the 
exploration for the expansion of American territory;, 
the ship was ordered back, and Ledyard was in no 
position to confront the English authorities. Again 
he was checkmated, and fell back on Jefferson's plan 
to cross the two Siberias on foot, and chance it over 



JOHN LEDYARD 257 

the Pacific. His friends in London gathered enough 
money to pay his way to St. Petersburg. 

January of 1787 saw him in Sweden seeking passage 
across the Baltic. Usually the trip to St. Petersburg 
was made by dog sleighs across the ice. This year 
the season had been so open, neither boats nor dog 
trains could be hired to make the trip. Ledyard was 
now thirty-six years old, and the sum of his efforts 
totalled to a zero. The first twenty-five years of his 
life he had wasted trying to fit his life to other men's 
patterns. The last five years he had wasted waiting 
for other men to act, men in New York, in Philadelphia, 
in Paris, in London, to give him a ship. He had done 
with waiting, with dependence on others. When boats 
and dog trains failed him now, he muffled himself in 
wolfskins to his neck, flung a knapsack on his back, 
and set out in midwinter to tramp overland six hundred 
miles north to Tornea at the head of the Baltic, six 
hundred miles south from Tornea, through Finland 
to St. Petersburg. Snow fell continually. Storms 
raged in from the sea. The little villages of northern 
Sweden and Finland were buried in snow to the chim- 
ney-tops. Wherever he happened to be at nightfall, 
he knocked at the door of a fisherman's hut. Wherever 
he was taken in, he slept, whether on the bare floor 
before the hearth, or among the dogs of the outhouses, 
or in the hay-lofts of the cattle sheds. No more wait- 
ing for Ledyard ! Storm or shine, early and late, he 



258 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

tramped two hundred miles a week for seven weeks 
from the time he left Stockholm. When he marched 
into St. Petersburg on the 19th of March, men hardly 
knew whether to regard him as a madman or a won- 
der. Using the names of Jefferson and Lafayette, he 
jogged up the Russian authorities by another appli- 
cation for the passport. The passport was long in 
coming. How was Ledyard to know that IsmylofF, 
the Russian fur trader, whom he had met in Oona- 
laska, had written letters stirring up the Russian gov- 
ernment to jealous resentment against all comers to 
the Pacific .? Ledyard was mad with impatience. 
Days slipped into weeks, weeks into months, and no 
passport came. He was out of clothes, out of money, 
out of food. A draft on his English friends kept him 
from destitution. Just a year before, Billings, the 
astronomer of Cook's vessel, had gone across Siberia 
on the way to America for the Russian government. 
If Ledyard could only catch up to Billings's expedition, 
that miaht be a chance to cross the Pacific. As if to 
exasperate his impatience still more, he met a Scotch 
physician, a Dr. William Brown, now setting out for 
Siberia on imperial business, who offered to carry him 
along free for three thousand of the seven thousand 
miles to the Pacific. Perhaps the proceeds of that 
English draft helped him with the slow Russian author- 
ities, but at last, on June I, he had his passport, and 
was off with Dr. Brown. His entire earthly posses- 
sions at this time consisted of a few guineas, a suit of 



JOHN LEDYARD 259 

clothes, and large debts. What was the crack-brained 
enthusiast aiming at anyway ? An empire half the 
present size of the United States. 

From St. Petersburg to Moscow in six days, drawn 
by three horses at breakneck pace, from Moscow to 
Kazan through the endless forests, on to the Volga, 
Brown and Ledyard hastened. By the autumn they 
were across the Barbary Desert, three thousand miles 
from St. Petersburg. Here Brown remained, and 
Ledyard went on with the Cossack mail carriers. All 
along the endless trail of two continents, the trail of 
East and West, he passed the caravans of the Russian 
fur traders, and learned the astonishing news that more 
than two thousand Russians were on the west coast of 
America. Down the Lena next, to Yakutsk, the 
great rendezvous of the fur traders, only one thousand 
miles more to the Pacific; and on the great plain of 
the fur traders near Yakutsk he at last overtook the 
Billings explorers on their way to America. Only one 
guinea was left in his pocket, and the Cossack com- 
mandant reported that the season was too far advanced 
for him to cross the Pacific. What did it matter .? He 
would cross the Pacific with Billings in spring. He 
was nearer the realization of his hopes than ever before 
in his life; and surely his success in tramping twice 
the length of Sweden, and in crossing two continents 
when almost destitute augured well for his success in 
crossing from the Pacific to the Missouri. 

Not for a moment was his almost childlike confidence 



26o VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

disturbed by a suspicion of bad faith, of intentional 
delay in issuing the passports, of excuses to hold him 
back at Yakutsk till the jealous fur traders could send 
secret complaints to St. Petersburg. Much less was 
he suspicious when Billings, his old friend of Cook's 
voyage, himself arrived, and invited him on a sled 
journey of exploration up the Lena while waiting.^ 

On sledges he went up the Lena River with a party 
of explorers. On the night of February 24 two or 
three of the officers and Ledyard were sitting in the 
mess room of Irkutsk playing cards. They might 
laugh at Ledyard. They also laughed with him. 
Wherever he went, went gayety. Gales of boisterous 
laughter were on the wind. Hopes as tenuous as the 
wind were in the air. One of the great Bering's sons 
was there, no doubt telling tales of discovery that set 
each man's veins jumping. Suddenly a tremendous 
jingling of bells announced some midnight arrival post- 
haste at the barracks' door. Before the card players 
had risen from their places, two Cossacks had burst 
into the room stamping snow from their feet. March- 
ing straight over to Ledyard, they seized him roughly 
by the arms and arrested him for a French spy, dis- 
playing the Empress's written orders, brought all the 
way from St. Petersburg. To say that Ledyard was 
dumfounded is putting it mildly. Every man in the 
room knew that he was not a French spy. Every man 

1 In Sauer's account of the Billings Expedition, some excuse is given for the con- 
duct of Billings on the ground that Ledyard had been insolent to the Russians. 



JOHN LEDYARD 261 

in the room knew that the arrest was a farce, instigated 
by the jealous fur traders whom IsmylofF's lying 
letters had aroused. For just a second Ledyard lost 
his head and called on Billings as a man of honor to 
confute the charge. However Ledyard might lose his 
head, Billings was not willing to lose his. He advised 
Ledyard not to provoke conflict with the Russian 
authorities, but to go back to St. Petersburg and dis- 
prove the charge. Was it a case of one explorer being 
jealous of another, or had Billings played Ledyard 
into the fur traders' trap f That will never be known. 
Certain it is, Billings made mess enough of his own 
expedition to go down to posterity as a failure. Some 
of the officers ran to get Ledyard a present of clothes 
and money. As he jumped into the waiting sledge and 
looked back over his shoulder at the group of faces 
smiling in the lighted doorway, he burst into a laugh, 
but it was the laugh of an embittered man, whose life 
had crumbled to ruin at one blow. The Cossacks 
whipped up the horses, and he was off^ on the long 
trail back, five thousand miles, every mile a sign post 
of blasted hopes. Without a word of explanation or 
the semblance of a trial on the false charge, he was 
banished out of St. Petersburg on pain of death if he 
returned. 

Ragged, destitute, the best years of his life gone, he 
reached London, heartbroken. "I give up," he told 
the English friends, who had backed him with money, 
and what was better than money — faith. " I give up," 



262 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

he wrote JeflFerson, who afterward had Lewis and 
Clark carry out Ledyard's plans. 

The men of the African Geographical Society in 
London tried to cheer him. When could he set out 
to explore the source of the Nile for them ? 

"To-morrow," answered Ledyard, with the heed- 
lessness of one who has lost grip on life. The salary 
advanced paid off the moss-grown debts of his dis- 
appointed past, but he never reached the scene of his 
new venture. He died on the way at Cairo, in No- 
vember, 1788, for all hope had already died in his 
heart. The world that has entered into the heritage 
of his aims has forgotten Ledyard ; for the public ac- 
claims only the heroes of success, and he was a hero 
of defeat. All that Lewis and Clark succeeded in 
doing for the West, backed by the prestige of govern- 
ment, Ledyard, the penniless soldier of fortune, had 
foreseen and planned with Jefferson in the attic apart- 
ments of Paris. ^ 

^Ledyard's Journal of Cook's Last Voyage, Hartford, 1783, and Sparks's Life of 
Ledyard, Cambridge, 1829. 



CHAPTER X 



1779-1794 



GEORGE VANCOUVER, LAST OF PACIFIC COAST 
EXPLORERS 

Activities of Americans, Spanish, and Russians on tlie West Coast of 
America arouse England — Vancouver is sent out ostensibly to 
settle the Quarrel between Fur Traders and Spanish Governors at 
Nootka — Incidentally, he is to complete the Exploration of 
America's West Coast and take Possession for England of Un- 
claimed Territory — The Myth of a Northeast Passage dispelled 
forever 

With Gray's entrance of the Columbia, the great 
drama of discovery on the northwest coast of 
America was drawing to a close. 

After the death of Bering on the Commander Islands, 
and of Cook at Hawaii, while on voyages to prove 
there was no Northeast Passage, no open waterway 
between Pacific and Atlantic, it seems impossible that 
the myth of an open sea from Asia to Europe could 
still delude men; but it was in hunting for China that 
Columbus found America; and it was in hunting for 
a something that had no existence except in the foolish 
theories of the schoolmen that the whole northwest 
coast of America was exploited. 

263 



264 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

Bering had been called "coward" for not sailing 
through a solid continent. Cook was accused of fur 
trading, "pottering in peltries," to the neglect of dis- 
covery, because his crews sold their sea-otter at profit. 
To be sure, the combined results of Bering's and 
Cook's voyages proved there was no waterway through 
Alaska to the Atlantic; but in addition to blackening 
the reputations of the two great navigators in order 
to throw discredit on their conclusions, the schoolmen 
bellicosely demanded — Might there not be a passage 
south of Alaska, between Russia's claim on the north 
and Spain's on the south ^ Both Bering and Cook 
had been driven out from this section of the coast by 
gales. This left a thousand miles of American coast 
unexplored. Cook had said there were no Straits of 
Fuca, of which the old Greek pilot in the service of 
New Spain had told legends of fictitious voyages two 
centuries before; yet Barclay, an East India English 
trader, had been up those very straits. So had 
Meares, another trader. So had Kendrick and Gray, 
the two Americans. This was the very section which 
Bering and Cook had left untouched; and who could 
tell where these straits might lead ? They were like 
a second Mediterranean. Meares argued they might 
connect with Hudson Bay. 

Then Spain had forced matters to a climax by 
seizing Meares's vessels and fort at Nootka as contra- 
band. That had only one meaning: Spain was trying 
to lay hands on everything from New Spain to Russian 




Captain George Vancouver. 



GEORGE VANCOUVER 265 

territory on the north. If Spain claimed all north to 
the Straits of Fuca, and Russia claimed all south to 
the Straits of Fuca, where was England's claim of 
New Albion discovered by Sir Francis Drake, and of 
all that coast which Cook had sighted round Nootka ? 
Captain George Vancouver, formerly midshipman 
with Cook, was summoned post-haste by the British 
Admiralty. Ostensibly, his mission was to receive 
back at Nootka all the lands which the Spaniards 
had taken from Meares, the trader. Really, he was 
to explore the coast from New Spain on the south, to 
Russian America on the north, and to hold that coast 
for England. That Spain had already explored the 
islands of this coast was a mere detail. There re- 
mained the continental shore still to be explored. 
Besides, Spain had not followed up her explorations 
by possession. She had kept her navigations secret. 
In many cases her navigators had not even landed. 

Vancouver was still in his prime, under forty. Serv- 
ing in the navy from boyhood, he had all a practical 
seaman's contempt for theories. This contempt was 
given point by the world's attitude toward Cook. 
Vancouver had been on the spot with Cook. He 
knew there was no Northeast Passage. Cook had 
proved that. Yet the world refused credence. 

For the practical navigator there remained only one 
course, and that course became the one aim, the con- 
suming ambition of Vancouver's life — to destroy the 



266 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

last vestige of the myth of a Northeast Passage; to 
explore the northwest coast of America so thoroughly 
there would not remain a single unknown inlet that 
could be used as a possible prop for the schoolmen's 
theories, to penetrate every inlet from California 
to Alaska — mainland and island; to demonstrate 
that not one possible opening led to the Atlantic. 
This was to be the object of Vancouver's life, and he 
carried it out with a thoroughness that left nothing 
for subsequent explorers to do; but he died before the 
record of his voyages had been given to the world. 

The two ships. Discovery and Chatham^ with a 
supply ship, the Dcedalus, to follow later, were fitted 
out for long and thorough work. Vancouver's vessel, 
the Discovery, carried twenty guns with a crew of a 
hundred men. The tender, Chatha?n, under Brough- 
ton, had ten guns and forty-five men. With Van- 
couver went Menzies, and Puget, and Baker, and 
Johnstone — names that were to become place marks 
on the Pacific. The Discovery and Chatham left Eng- 
land in the spring of 1791. A year later found them 
cutting the waves from Hawaii for America, the New 
Albion of Drake's discovery, forgotten by England 
until Spain's activity stimulated memory of the pirate 
voyage. 

A swashing swell met the ships as they neared Amer- 
ica. Phosphorescent lights blue as sulphur flame slimed 
the sea in a trail of rippling fire; and a land bird, 
washed out by the waves, told of New Albion's shore. 



GEORGE VANCOUVER 267 

For the first two weeks of April, the Discovery and 
Chatham had driven under cloud of sail and sunny 
skies; but on the i6th, just when the white fret of reefs 
ahead forewarned land, heavy weather settled over 
the ships. To the fore, bare, majestic, compact as a 
wall, the coast of New Albion towered out of the surf 
near Mendocino. Cheers went up from the lookout 
for the landfall of Francis Drake's discovery. Then 
torrents of rain washed out surf and shore. The hurri- 
cane gales, that had driven all other navigators out to 
sea from this coast, now lashed Vancouver. Such 
smashing seas swept over decks, that masts, sails, 
railings, were wrenched away. 

Was it ill-luck or destiny, that caught Vancouver 
in this gale ? If he had not been driven offshore 
here, he might have been just two weeks before Gray 
on the Colutnbia, and made good England's claim of 
all territory between New Spain and Alaska. When 
the weather cleared on April 27, the ocean was turgid, 
plainly tinged river-color by inland waters; but ground 
swell of storm and tide rolled across the shelving sand- 
bars. Not a notch nor an opening breached through 
the flaw of the horizon from the ocean to the source of 
the shallow green. Vancouver was too far offshore to 
see that there really was a break in the surf wash. He 
thought — and thought rightly — this was the place 
where the trader, Meares, had hoped to find the great 
River of the West, only to be disappointed and to name 
the point Cape Disappointment. Vancouver was 



268 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

not to be fooled by any such fanciful theories. "Not 
considering this opening worthy of more attention," 
he writes, "I continued to the northwest." He had 
missed the greatest honor that yet remained for any 
discoverer on the Pacific. Within two weeks Gray, 
the American, heading back to these baffling tides with 
a dogged persistence that won its own glory, was to 
succeed in passing the breakers and discovering the 
Columbia. As the calm permitted approach to the 
shore again, forests appeared through the haze — that 
soft, velvet, caressing haze of the dreamy, lazily swell- 
ing Pacific — forests of fir and spruce and pine and 
cypress, in all the riot of dank spring growth, a dense 
tangle of windfall and underbrush and great vines 
below, festooned with the light green stringy mosses 
of cloud line overhead and almost impervious to sun- 
light. Myriad wild fowl covered the sea. The coast 
became beetling precipice, that rolled inland forest- 
clad to mountains jagging ragged peaks through the 
clouds. This was the Olympus Range, first noticed 
by Meares, and to-day seen for miles out at sea like a 
ridge of opalescent domes suspended in mid-heaven. 

Vancouver was gliding into the Straits of Fuca when 
the slender colors of a far ship floated above the blue 
horizon outward bound. Another wave-roll, and the 
flag was seen to be above full-blown sails and a square- 
hulled, trim little trader of America. At six in the 
morning of April 29, the American saluted with a 



GEORGE VANCOUVER 



269 



cannon-shot. Vancouver answered with a charge 
from his decks, rightly guessing this was Robert Gray 
on the Columbia. 

Puget and Menzies were sent to inquire about 
Gray's cruise. They brought back word that Gray had 
been fifty miles up the Straits of Fuca; and — most 




The Columbia in a Squall. 



astounding to Vancouver's ambitions — that the Ameri- 
can had been off the mouth of a river south of the 
straits at 46° lo^ where the tide prevented entrance 
for nine days. "The river Mr. Gray mentioned," 
says Vancouver, "should be south of Cape Disap- 
pointment. This we passed on the forenoon of the 
27th ; and if any inlet or river be found, it must be a 



270 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

very intricate one, inaccessible . . . owing to reefs 
and broken water. ... I was thoroughly convinced, 
as were most persons on board, that we could not pos- 
sibly have passed any cape . . . from Mendocino to 
Classet (Flattery)." 

Keen to prove that no Northeast Passage existed by 
way of the Straits of Fuca, Vancouver headed inland, 
close to the south shore, where craggy heights offered 
some guidance through the labyrinth of islands and fog. 
Eight miles inside the straits he anchored for the night. 
The next morning the sun rose over one of the fairest 
scenes of the Pacific coast — an arm of the sea placid 
as a lake, gemmed by countless craggy islands. On 
the land side were the forested valleys rolling in to 
the purple folds of the mountains; and beyond, east- 
ward, dazzling as a huge shield of fire in the sunrise, 
a white mass whiter than the whitest clouds, swimming 
aerially in mid-heaven. Lieutenant Baker was the 
first to catch a glimpse of the vision for which every 
western traveller now watches, the famous peak seen 
by land or sea for hundreds of miles, the playground 
of the jagged green lightnings on the hot summer 
nights; and the peak was named after him — Mount 
Baker. 

For the first time in history white men's boats plied 
the waters of the great inland sea now variously known 
as Admiralty Inlet, Puget Sound, Hood Canal. There 
must be no myth of a Northeast Passage left lurking 
in any of the many inlets of this spider-shaped sea. 



GEORGE VANCOUVER 271 

Vancouver, Menzies, Puget, and Johnstone set out in 
the small boats to penetrate every trace of v^ater passage. 
Instead of leading northeast, the tangled maze of for- 
est-hidden channels meandered southward. Savages 
swarmed over the water, paddling round and round 
the white men, for all the world like birds of prey cir- 
cling for a chance to swoop at the first unguarded 
moment. Tying trinkets to pieces of wood, Puget let 
the gifts float back as peace-offerings to woo good will. 
The effect was what softness always is to an Indian 
spoiling for a fight, an incentive to boldness. When 
Puget landed for noon meal, a score of redskins lined 
up ashore and began stringing their bows for action. 
Puget drew a line along the sand with his cutlass and 
signalled the warriors to keep back. They scrambled 
out of his reach with a great clatter. It only needed 
some fellow bolder than the rest to push across the line, 
and massacre would begin. Puget did not wait. By 
way of putting the fear of the Lord and respect for the 
white man in the heart of the Indian, he trained the 
swivel of the small boat landward, and fired in midair. 
The result was instant. Weapons were dropped. 
On Monday, midday, June 4, Vancouver and Brough- 
ton landed at Point Possession. Officers drew up in 
line. The English flag was unfurled, a royal salute 
fired, and possession taken of all the coast of New 
Albion from latitude 39 to the Straits of Fuca, which 
Vancouver named Gulf of Georgia. Just a month 
before. Gray, the American, had preceded this act of 



272 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

possession by a similar ceremony for the United States 
on the banks of the Columbia. 

The sum total of Vancouver's work so far had been 
the exploration of Puget Sound, which is to the West 
what the Gulf of St. Lawrence is to the East. For 
Puget Sound and its allied waters he had done exactly 
what Cartier accomplished for the Atlantic side of 
America. His next step was to learn if the Straits of 
Fuca leading northward penetrated America and came 
out on the Atlantic side. That is what the old Greek 
pilot in the service of New Spain, Juan de Fuca, had 
said some few years after Drake and Cavendish had 
been out on the coast of California. 

Though Vancouver explored the Pacific coast more 
thoroughly than all the other navigators who had pre- 
ceded him, — so thoroughly, indeed, that nothing was 
left to be done by the explorers who came after him, 
and modern surveys have been unable to improve upon 
his charts, — it seemed his ill-luck to miss by just a 
hair's breadth the prizes he coveted. He had missed 
the discovery of the Columbia. He was now to miss 
the second largest river of the Northwest, the Fraser. 
He had hoped to be the first to round the Straits of 
Fuca, disproving the assumption that they led to the 
Atlantic; and he came on the spot only to learn that 
the two English traders, Meares and Barclay, the two 
Americans, Kendrick and Gray, and two Spaniards, 
Don Galiano and Don Valdes, had already proved 



GEORGE VANCOUVER 273 

practically that this part of the coast was a large 
island, and the Straits of Fuca an arm of the Pacific 
Ocean. 

Fifty Indians, in the long dugouts, of grotesquely 
carved prows and gaudy paint common among Pacific 
tribes, escorted Vancouver's boats northward the 
second week in June through the labyrinthine passage- 
ways of cypress-grown islets to Burrard Inlet. To 
Peter Puget was assigned the work of coasting the main- 
land side and tracing every inlet to its head waters. 
Johnstone went ahead in a small boat to reconnoitre 
the way out of the Pacific. On both sides the shores 
now rose in beetling precipice and steep mountains, 
down which foamed cataracts setting the echo of 
myriad bells tinkling through the wilds. The sea 
was tinged with milky sediment; but fog hung thick 
as a blanket; and Vancouver passed on north without 
seeing Fraser River. A little farther on, toward the 
end of June, he was astonished to meet a Spanish brig 
and schooner exploring the straits. Don Galiano and 
Don Valdes told him of the Fraser, which he had missed, 
and how the Straits of Fuca led out to the North Pacific. 
They had also been off Puget Sound, but had not gone 
inland, and brought Vancouver word that Don Quadra, 
the Spanish emissary, sent to restore to England the 
fort from which Meares, the trader, had been ousted, 
had arrived at Nootka on the other side of the island, 
and was waiting. The explorers all proceeded up the 
straits together; but the little Spanish crafts were unable 



274 



VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 



to keep abreast of the big English vessels, so with a 
friendly cheer from both sides, the English went on 
alone. 

Strange Indian villages lined the beetling heights of 
the straits. The houses, square built and of log slabs, 
row on row, like the streets of the white man, were 




The Discovery on the Rocks. 



situated high on isolated rocks, inaccessible to approach 
except by narrow planking forming a causeway from 
rock walls across the sea to the branches of a tree. 
In other places rope ladders formed the only path 
to the aerial dwellings, or the zigzag trail up the steep 
face of a rock down which defenders could hurl stones. 
Howe's Sound, Jervis Canal, Bute Inlet, were passed; 



GEORGE VANCOUVER 275 

and in July Johnstone came back with news he had 
found a narrow channel out to the Pacific. 

The straits narrowed to less than half a mile with 
such a terrific tide wash that on Sunday, July 29, the 
ships failed to answer to the helm and waves seventeen 
feet high dashed over decks. Progress was made by 
hauling the boats alongshore with ropes braced round 
trees. By the first of August a dense fog swept in 
from the sea. The Discovery crashed on a sunken 
rock, heeling over till her sails were within three inches 
of water. Ballast was thrown overboard, and the next 
tide-rush lifted her. By August 19 Vancouver had 
proved — if any doubt remained — that no Northeast 
Passage was to be found by way of the Straits of Fuca.^ 
Then, veering out to sea at midnight through squalls 

1 The legend of Juan de Fuca became current about 1592, as issued in Samuel 
Purchas" Pilgrims in 1625, Vol. Ill : "A note made by Michael Lok, the elder, 
touching the strait of sea commonly called Fretum Anian in the South Sea through the 
North-West Passage of Meta Incognita." Lok met in Venice, in April, 1596, an 
old man called Juan de Fuca, a Greek mariner and pilot, of the crew of the galleon 
Santa Anna taken by Cavendish near southern California in 1587. The pilot narrated 
after his return to Mexico, he was sent by the viceroy with three vessels to discover the 
Strait of Anian. This expedition failing, he was again sent in 1592, with a small 
caravel in which ' ' he followed the course west and northwest to latitude 47 north, 
there finding a broad inlet between 47 and 48, he entered, sailing therein more than 
twenty days . . . and found very much broader sea than was at the said entrance . . . 
a great island with a high pinnacle. . . . Being come into the North Sea ... he 
returned to Acapulco." According to the story the old pilot tried to find his way to 
England in the hope of the Queen recouping him for goods taken by Cavendish, and 
furnishing him with a ship to essay the Northeast Passage again. The old man died 
before Raleigh and other Englishmen could forward money for him to come to England. 
Whether the story is purely a sailor's yarn, or the pilot really entered the straits named 
after him, and losing his bearings when he came out in the Pacific imagined he was on 
the Atlantic, is a dispute among savants. 



276 



VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 



of rain, he steered to Nootka for the conference with 
Spain. 

Vancouver came to Nootka on the 28th of August. 
Nootka was the grand rallying place of fur traders on 
the Pacific. It was a triangular sound extending into 
the shores of Vancouver Island. On an island at the 




Indian Settlement at Nootka. 



mouth of the sound the Spaniards had built their 
fort. This part of the bay was known as Friendly 
Cove. To the north was Snug Cove, where Cook 
had anchored ; to the south the roadstead of the fur 
traders. Mountains rose from the water-line; and on a 
terrace of hills above the Spanish fort was the native 
village of Maquinna, the Indian chief. 



GEORGE VANCOUVER 277 

Here, then, came Vancouver, met at the harbor mouth 
by a Spanish officer with pilot to conduct the Discovery 
to the Spanish fort of Nootka. The Chatham, the 
DcBdaluSy Vancouver's store ship, two or three Enghsh 
fur-trading ships, Spanish frigates bristHng with cannon, 
were already at anchor ; and the bright Spanish pen- 
nant, red and yellow, waved to the wind above the 
cannon-mounted, palisaded log fort of Nootka. 

Donning regimentals. Lieutenant Puget marched 
solemnly up to the fort to inform Don Juan de la 
Bodega y Quadra, representative of Spain, that Captain 
George Vancouver, representative of England, had 
arrived at Nootka to await the pleasure of New Spain's 
commander. It was New Spain's pleasure to receive 
England's salute; and Vancouver's guns roared out a 
volley of thirteen shots to the amaze of two thousand 
or more savages watching from the shores. Formally 
accompanied by his officers, Vancouver then paid his 
respects to New Spain. Don Quadra returned the 
compliment by breakfasting next morning on board the 
Discovery, while his frigates in turn saluted England 
by a volley of thirteen guns. In all this solemn parade 
of formality, Maquinna, lord of the wild domain, began 
to wonder what part he was to play, and ventured to 
board the Discovery, clad in a garb of nature, to join 
the breakfast of the leaders; when he was summarily 
cuffed overboard by the guard, who failed to recognize 
the Indian's quality. Don Quadra then gave a grand 
dinner to the English, to which the irate Maquinna 



278 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

was invited. Five courses the dinner had, with royal 
salutes setting the echoes rolling in the hills. Seven- 
teen guns were fired to the success of Vancouver's 
explorations. Toasts were drunk, foaming toasts to 
glory, and the navigators of the Pacific, and Maquinna, 
grand chief of the Nootkas, who responded by rising 
in his place, glass in hand, to express regret that Spain 
should withdraw from the North Pacific. It was then 
the brilliant thought flashed on Don Quadra to win the 
friendship of the Indians for all the white traders on 
the Pacific coast through a ceremonious visit by Van- 
couver and himself to Maquinna's home village, twenty 
miles up the sound. 

Cutter and yawl left Friendly Cove at eight in the 
morning of September 4, coming to Maquinna's home 
village at two in the afternoon. Don Quadra supplied 
the dinner, served in style by his own Spanish lackeys; 
and the gallant Spaniard led Maquinna's only daughter 
to the seat at the head of the spread, where the young 
squaw did the honors with all the hauteur of the Indian 
race. Maquinna then entertained his visitors with a 
sham battle of painted warriors, followed by a mask 
dance. Not to be outdone, the whites struck up fife 
and drum, and gave a wild display of Spanish fandan- 
goes and Scotch reels. In honor of the day's outing, 
it was decided to name the large island which Vancouver 
had almost circumnavigated. Quadra and Vancouver. 

When Maquinna returned this visit, there were fire- 
works, and more toasts, and more salutes. All this 



GEORGE VANCOUVER 279 

was very pleasant; but it was not business. Then 
Vancouver requested Don Quadra to ratify the inter- 
national agreement between England and Spain; but 
there proved to be a wide difference of opinion as to 
what that agreement meant. Vancouver held that it 
entailed the surrender of Spain's sovereignty from San 
Francisco northward. Don Quadra maintained that 
it only surrendered Spanish rights north of Juan de 
Fuca, leaving the northwest coast free to all nations 
for trade. With Vancouver it was all or nothing. 
Don Quadra then suggested that letters be sent to Spain 
and England for more specific instructions. For this 
purpose Lieutenant Broughton was to be despatched 
overland across Mexico to Europe. It was at this stage 
that Robert Gray came down from the north on the 
damaged Columbia, to receive assistance from Quadra. 
Within three weeks Gray had sailed for Boston, Don 
Quadra for New Spain, and Vancouver to the south, 
to examine that Columbia River of Gray's before pro- 
ceeding to winter on the Sandwich Islands. 

The three English ships hauled out of Nootka in 
the middle of October, steering for that new river of 
Gray's, of which Vancouver had expressed such doubt. 
The foaming reefs of Cape Disappointment were 
sighted and the north entrance seen just as Gray had 
described it. The Chatham rode safely inside the 
heavy cross swell, though her small boat smashed 
to chips among the breakers; but on Sunday, October 



28o VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

2i, such mountainous seas were running that Vancouver 
dared not risk his big ship, the Discovery, across the 
bar. Broughton was intrusted to examine the Colum- 
bia before setting out to England for fresh orders. 

The Chatham had anchored just inside Cape Dis- 
appointment on the north, then passed south to Cape 
Adams, using Gray's chart as guide. Seven miles up 
the north coast, a deep bay was named after Gray. 
Nine or ten Indian dugouts with one hundred and 
fifty warriors now escorted Broughton's rowboat up- 
stream. The lofty peak ahead covered with snow 
was named Mt. Hood. For seven days Broughton 
followed the river till his provision ran out, and the 
old Indian chief with him explained by the signs of 
pointing in the direction of the sunrise and letting 
water trickle through his fingers that water-falls ahead 
would stop passage. Somehow, Broughton seemed to 
think because Gray, a private trader, had not been 
clad in the gold-braid regimentals of authority, his 
act of discovery was void; for Broughton landed, 
and with the old chief assisting at the ceremony by 
drinking healths, took possession of all the region for 
England, "having" as the record of the trip explains, 
"every reason to believe that the subjects of no other 
civilized nation or state had ever entered this river 
before; in this opinion he was confirmed by Mr. 
Gray's sketch, in which it does not appear that Mr. 
Gray either saw or was ever within five leagues of the 
entrance." 



GEORGE VANCOUVER 281 

Any comment on this proceeding is superfluous. 
It was evidently in the hope that the achievement of 
Gray — an unassuming fur trader, backed by nothing 
but his own dauntless courage — would be forgotten, 
which it certainly was for fifty years by nearly all 
Americans. Three days later, on November 3, Brough- 
ton was back down-stream at the Chatham, noting the 
deserted Indian village of Chinook as he passed to 
the harbor mouth. On November 6, in heavy rain, the 
ship stood out for sea, passing the Jenny of Bristol, 
imprisoned inside the cape by surf. Broughton landed 
to reconnoitre the passage out. The wind calmed next 
day, and a breach was descried through the surf. The 
little trading ship led the way, Broughton following, 
hard put to keep the Chatham headed for the sea, 
breakers roUing over her from stem to stern, snapping 
the tow-rope of the launch and washing a sailor over- 
board; and we cannot but have a higher respect for 
Gray's feat, knowing the difficulties that Broughton 
weathered. 

Meanwhile Vancouver on the Discovery had coasted 
on down from the mouth of the Columbia to Drake's 
Bay, just outside the Golden Gate of San Francisco, 
where the bold English pirate had anchored in 1579. 
By nightfall of November 14 he was inside the spacious 
harbor of San Francisco. Two men on horseback 
rode out from the Spanish settlement, a mile back 
from the water front, firing muskets as a salute to 
Vancouver. The next morning, a Spanish friar and 



282 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

ensign came aboard the Discovery for breakfast, point- 
ing out to Vancouver the best anchorage for both 
wood and water. While the sailors went shooting 
quail on the hills, or amused themselves watching the 
Indians floating over the harbor on rafts made of dry 
rushes and grass, the good Spanish padre conducted 
Vancouver ashore to the presidio, or house of the com- 
mandant, back from the landing on a little knoll sur- 
rounded by hills. The fort was a square area of adobe 
walls fourteen feet high and five deep, the outer beams 
filled in between with a plaster of solid mortar, houses 
and walls whitewashed from lime made of sea-shells. 
A small brass cannon gathered rust above one dilapi- 
dated carriage, and another old gun was mounted by 
being lashed to a rotten log. A single gate led into the 
fort, which was inhabited by the commandant, the 
guard of thirty-five soldiers, and their families. The 
windows of the houses were very small and without 
glass, the commandant's house being a rude structure 
thirty by fourteen feet, whitewashed inside and out, 
the floor sand and rushes, the furnishings of the rough- 
est handicraft. The mission proper was three miles 
from the fort, with a guard of five soldiers and a cor- 
poral. Such was the beginning of the largest city on 
the Pacific coast to-day. 

Broughton was now sent overland to England for 
instructions about the transfer of Nootka. Puget be- 
came commander of the Chatham. The store ship 
Dcedalus was sent to the South Seas, and touching only 



GEORGE VANCOUVER 283 

at Monterey, Vancouver sailed to winter in the Sand- 
wich Islands. Here two duties awaited the explorer, 
which he carried out in a way that left a streak both of 
glory and of shame across his escutcheon. The Sand- 
wich Islands had become the halfway house of the 
Pacific for the fur traders. How fur traders — riff- 
raff adventurers from earth's ends beyond the reach of 
law — may have acted among these simple people 
may be guessed from the conduct of Cook's crews; 
and Cook was a strict disciplinarian. Those who sow 
to the wind, need not be surprised if they reap the 
whirlwind. White men, welcomed bv these Indians as 
gods, repaid the native hospitality by impressing na- 
tives as crews to a northern climate where the transition 
from semitropics meant almost certain death. For a 
fur trader to slip into Hawaii, entice women aboard, 
then scud off to America where the victims might rot 
unburied for all the traders cared — was considered 
a joke. How the joke caused Captain Cook's death 
the world knows; and the joke was becoming a little 
frequent, a little bold, a little too grim for the white 
traders' sense of security. The Sandwich Islanders had 
actually formed the plot of capturing every vessel that 
came into their harbors and holding the crews for ex- 
tortionate ransom. How many white men were victims 
of this plot — to die by the assassin's knife or waiting 
for the ransom that never came — is not a part of 
this record. It was becoming a common thing to find 
white men living in a state of quasi-slavery among the 



284 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

islanders, each white held as hostage for the security of 
the others not escaping. Within three years three 
ships had been attacked, one Spanish, one American, 
one English — the store ship Dcedalus on the way out 
to Nootka with supplies for Vancouver. Two officers, 
Hergest and Gooch of the Dcsdalus, had been seized, 
stripped naked, forced at the point of spears up a hill 
to the native village, and cut to pieces. Vancouver 
determined to put a stop to such attacks. Arriving at 
the islands, he trained his cannon ashore, demanded 
that the murderers of the Dcsdalus's officers be surren- 
dered, tried the culprits with all the solemnity and 
speed of English court-martial, sentenced them to 
death, had them tied up to the mast poles and executed. 
That is the blot against Vancouver; for the islanders 
had put up a trick. The real murderers had been 
leading chiefs. Not wishing to surrender these, the 
islanders had given Vancouver poor slaves quite guilt- 
less of the crime. 

In contrast to this wrong-headed demonstration of 
justice was Vancouver's other act. At Nootka he 
had found among the traders two young Hawaiian 
girls not more than fifteen and nineteen years of age, 
whom some blackguard trader had forcibly carried off. 
The most of great voyagers would not have soiled their 
gloves interfering with such a case. Cook had winked 
at such crimes. Drake, two hundred years before, 
had laughed. The Russians outdid either Drake or 
Cook. They dumped the victims overboard where the 



GEORGE VANCOUVER 285 

sea told no tales. Vancouver might have been strict 
enough disciplinarian to execute the w^rong men by 
w^ay of a lesson; but he was consistent in his strictness. 
Round these two friendless savages he wrapped all the 
chivalry and the might of the English flag. He re- 
ceived them on board the Discovery, treated them as he 
might have treated his own sisters, prevented the pos- 
sibility of insult from the common sailors by having 
them at his own table on the ship, taught them the 
customs of Europeans toward women and the reasons 
for those customs, so that the young girls presently had 
the respect and friendship of every sailor on board the 
Discovery. In New Spain he had obtained clothing 
and delicacies for them that white women have; and 
in the Sandwich Islands took precautions against their 
death at the hands of Hawaiians for having been on the 
ship with strange men, by securing from the Sand- 
wich Island chief the promise of his protection for 
them and the gifts of a home inside the royal en- 
closure. 

April of 1793 saw Vancouver back again on the west 
coast of America. In results this year's exploring was 
largely negative; but the object of Vancouver's life 
was a negative one — to prove there was no passage 
between Pacific and Atlantic. He had missed the 
Columbia the previous year by standing off" the coast 
north of Mendocino. So this year, he again plied up 
the same shore to Nootka. No fresh instructions had 



286 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

come from England or Spain to Nootka; and Van- 
couver took up the trail of the sea where he had stopped 
the year before, carrying forward survey of island and 
mainland from Vancouver Island northward to the 
modern Sitka or Norfolk Sound. Gray, the American, 
had been attacked by Indians here the year before; 
and Vancouver did not escape the hostility of these 
notoriously treacherous tribes. Up Behm Canal the 
ships were visited by warriors wearing death-masks, 
who refused everything in exchange for their sea-otter 
except firearms. The canal here narrowed to a dark 
canyon overhung by beetling cliffs. Four large war 
canoes manned by several hundred savages daubed 
with war paint succeeded in surrounding the small 
launch, and while half the warriors held the boat to 
prevent it escaping, the rest had rifled it of everything 
they could take, from belaying-pins and sail rope to fire- 
arms, before Vancouver lost patience and gave orders to 
fire. At the shot the Indians were over decks and 
into the sea like water-rats, while forces ambushed on 
land began rolling rocks and stones down the preci- 
pices. One gains some idea of Vancouver's thorough- 
ness by his work up Portland Canal, which was to 
become famous a hundred years later as the scene of 
boundary disputes. Here, so determined was he to 
prove none of the passages led to the Atlantic that his 
small boat actually cruised seven hundred miles with- 
out going more than sixty miles from ocean front. By 
October of 1793 Vancouver had demolished the myth of 



GEORGE VANCOUVER 287 

a possible passage between New Spain and Russian 
America; for he had examined every inlet from San 
Francisco to what is now Sitka. While the results 
were negative to himself, far different were they to 
Russia. It was Vancouver's voyage northward that 
stirred the Russians up to move southward. In a 
word, if Vancouver had not gone up as far as Norfolk 
Sound or Sitka, the Russian fur traders would have 
drowsed on with Kadiak as headquarters, and Canada 
to-day might have included the entire gold-fields of 
Alaska. 

Again Vancouver wintered in the Sandwich Islands. 
In the year 1794 he changed the direction of his ex- 
ploring. Instead of beginning at New Spain and work- 
ing north, he began at Russian America and worked 
south. Kadiak and Cook's Inlet were regarded as the 
eastern bounds of Russian settlement at this time, 
though the hunting brigades of the Russians scoured 
far and wide; so Vancouver began his survey eastward 
at Cook's Inlet. Terrific floods of ice banged the ships' 
bows as they plied up Cook's Inlet; and the pistol-shot 
reports of the vast icebergs breaking from the walls of 
the solid glacier coast forewarned danger; but Van- 
couver was not to be deterred. Again the dogged ill- 
luck of always coming in second for the prize he coveted 
marked each stage of his trip. Russian forts were 
seen on Cook's Inlet, Russian settlements on Prince 
William Sound, Russian flotillas of nine hundred 



288 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

Aleutian hunters steering by instinct like the gulls 
spreading over the sea as far east as Bering Bay, or 
where the coast of Alaska dips southward. Every- 
where he heard the language of Russia, everywhere 
saw that Russia regarded his explorations with jealousy 
as intrusion; everywhere observed that Russian and 
savage had come to an understanding and now lived as 
friends, if not brothers. Twice Baranof, the little 
Czar of the North, sent word for Vancouver to await a 
conference; but Vancouver was not keen to meet the 
little Russian potentate. One row at a time was 
enough; and the quarrel with Spain was still unsettled. 
The waters of to-day plied by the craft of gold seekers, 
Bering Bay, Lynn Canal, named after his birthplace, 
were now so thoroughly surveyed by Vancouver that 
his charts may still be used. 

Only once did the maze of waterways seem to prom- 
ise a northeast passage. It was up Lynn Canal, where 
so many gold seekers have rushed to have their hopes 
dashed, like Vancouver. Two officers had gone up 
the channel in a small boat to see if any opening led to 
the Atlantic. Boisterous weather and tremendous tide 
had lashed the sea to foam. The long daylight was so 
delusive that the men did not realize it was nearly mid- 
night. At ten o'clock they had rowed ashore, to rest 
from their fight with wave and wind, when armed 
Indians suddenly rushed down to the water's edge in 
battle array, spears couched. The exhausted rowers 
bent to the oars all night. At one place in their re- 



GEORGE VANCOUVER 289 

treat to open sea, the fog lifted to reveal the passage 
between precipices only a few feet wide with warriors' 
canoes on every side. A crash of musketry drove the 
assailants off. Two or three men kept guard with 
pointed muskets, while the oarsmen pulled through a 
rolling cross swell back to the protection of the big 
ships outside. 

On August 19, as the ships drove south to Norfolk 
or Sitka Sound, the men suddenly recognized head- 
lands where they had cruised the summer before. For 
a second they scarcely realized. Then they knew 
that their explorations from Alaska southward had 
come to the meeting place of their voyage from New 
Spain northward. Just a little more than fifty years 
from Bering's discoveries, the exploration of the north- 
west coast of America had been completed. Some one 
emitted an incoherent shout that the work was finished ! 
The cheer was caught up by every man on board. 
Some one else recalled that it had been April when they 
set out on the fool-quest of the Northeast Passage; and 
a true April's fool the quest had proved ! Then flags 
were run up; the wine casks brought out, the marines 
drawn up in line, and three such volleys of joy fired as 
those sailors alone could feel. For four years they had 
followed the foolish quest of the learned world's error. 
That night Vancouver gave a gala dinner to his crews. 
They deserved it. Their four years' cruise marked the 
close of the most heroic epoch on the Pacific coast. 
Vancouver had accomplished his life-work — there 

V 



290 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

was no northeast passage through the west coast of 
America.^ 

1 The data of Vancouver's voyage come chiefly, of course, from the volume by 
himself, issued after his death. Voyage of Dnco'very to the Pacific Ocean, London, 1798. 
Supplementary data may be found in the records of predecessors and contemporaries like 
Meares's Voyages, London, 1790 ; Portlock's Voyage, London, 1789; Dixon's Voyage, 
London, 1789, and others, from whom nearly all modern writers, like Greenhow, Hubert 
Howe Bancroft, draw their information. The reports of Dr. Davidson in his Coast 
and Survey work, and his Alaska Bouridar\, identify many of Vancouver's landfalls, 
and illustrate the tremendous difficulties overcome in local topography. It is hardly 
necessary to refer to Begg and Mayne, and other purely local sketches of British Co- 
lumbian coast lines ; as Begg's History simply draws from the old voyages. Of modern 
works, Dr. Davidson's Survey works, and the official reports of the Canadian Geo- 
logical Survey (Dawson), are the only ones that add any facts to what Vancouver has 
recorded. 



PART III 

EXPLORATION GIVES PLACE TO FUR TRADE — THE 
EXPLOITATION OF THE PACIFIC COAST UNDER 
THE RUSSIAN AMERICAN FUR COMPANY, AND 
THE RENOWNED LEADER BARANOF 



CHAPTER XI 

1579-1867 

THE RUSSIAN AMERICAN FUR COMPANY 

The Pursuit of the Sable leads Cossacks across Siberia, of the Sea- 
Otter, across the Pacific as far South as California — Caravans of 
Four Thousand Horses on the Long Trail Seven Thousand Miles 
across Europe and Asia — Banditti of the Sea — The Union of All 
Traders in One Monopoly — Siege and Slaughter of Sitka — How 
Monroe Doctrine grew out of Russian Fur Trade — Aims of Russia 
to dominate North Pacific 

"Sea Voyagers of the Northern Ocean,^^ they styled 
themselves, the Cossack banditti — robber knights, 
pirates, plunderers — who pursued the little sable 
across Europe and Asia eastward, just as the French 
coureurs des hois followed the beaver across America 
westward. And these two great tides of adventurers 
— the French voyager, threading the labyrinthine 
waterways of American wilds westward; the Russian 
voyager exchanging his reindeer sled and desert cara- 
vans for crazy rafts of green timbers to cruise across 
the Pacific eastward — were directed both to the same 
region, animated by the same impulse, the capture of 
the Pacific coast of America. 

293 



294 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

The tide of adventure set eastward across Siberia at 
the very time (1579) Francis Drake, the English free- 
booter, was sacking the ports of New Spain on his way 
to California. Yermac, robber knight and leader of 
a thousand Cossack banditti, had long levied tribute 
of loot on the caravans bound from Russia to Persia. 
Then came the avenging army of the Czar. Yermac 
fled to Siberia, wrested the country from the Tartars, 



^ -4»- 'H^MiM^ 



Raised Reindeer Sledges. 

and obtained forgiveness from the Czar by laying a 
new realm at his feet. But these Cossack plunderers 
did not stop with Siberia. Northward were the ivory 
tusks of the frozen tundras. Eastward were precious 
furs of the snow-padded forests and mountains toward 
Kamchatka. For both ivory and furs the smugglers 
of the Chinese borderlands would pay a price. On 
pretence of collecting one-tenth tribute for the Czar, 
forward pressed the Cossacks; now on horseback, — 



RUSSIAN AMERICAN FUR COMPANY 295 

wild brutes got in trade from Tartars, — now behind 
reindeer teams through snowy forests where the spread- 
ing hoofs carried over drifts; now on rude-planked 
rafts hewn from green firs on the banks of Siberian 
rivers; on and on pushed the plunderers till the Arctic 
rolled before them on the north, and the Pacific on the 
east/ Nor did the seas of these strange shores bar the 
Cossacks. Long before Peter the Great had sent 
Vitus Bering to America in 1741, Russian voyagers had 
launched out east and north with a daredevil reckless- 
ness that would have done honor to prehistoric man. 
That part of their adventures is a record that exceeds 
the wildest darings of fiction. Their boats were called 
kotches. They were some sixty feet long, flat bottomed, 
planked with green timber. Not a nail was used. 
Where were nails to come from six thousand miles 
across the frozen tundras } Indeed, iron was so scarce 
that at a later day when ships with nails ventured on 

1 Coxe and Miiller are the two great authorities on the early Russian fur trade. 
Data on later days can be found in abundance in Krusenstern's Vo\age, London, 1813; 
Kohl's History, London, 1862; LangsdorfFs Tra-veis, London, 1813; Stejneger's 
Contributions to Smithsonian, 1884, and Report on Commander Islands; Elliott's Our 
Arctic Province; Dall's Alaska; Veniaminof's Letters on Aleutians; Cleveland's 
Voyages, 1842; Nordenskjold's Voyage of the Vega; Macfie's Vancouver Island; 
Ivan PetrofTs Report on Alaska, 1880 ; Lisiansky's Voyage Round the World ; Sauer's 
Geographical Account of Expedition to Northern Parts; Kotzebue's Voyages of Dis- 
co-very, 1 8 19, and Ne%v Voyage, 1831 ; Chappe d'Auteroche's Siberia and Krache- 
ninnikoPs Kamchatka, 1764; Simpson's Voyage Round World, 1847; Burney's 
Voyages; Gmelin's Siberia, Paris, 1767; Greenhow's Oregon; Pallas's Northern 
Settlements ; Broughton's Voyage, 1804; Berg's Aleutian Islands; Bancroft's Alaska; 
Massa. Hist. Coll., 1 79 3-1 79 5; U. S. Congressional Reports from 1 8 67; Martin's 
Hudson's Bay Territories, London, 1849. 



296 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

these seas natives were detected diving below to pull the 
nails from the timbers with their teeth. Instead of 
nails, the Cossack used reindeer thongs to bind the 
planking together. Instead of tar, moss and clay and 
the tallow of sea animals calked the seams. Needless 
to say, there was neither canvas nor rope. Reindeer 
thongs supplied the cordage, reindeer hides the sails. 
On such rickety craft, "with the help of God and a 
little powder," the Russian voyagers hoisted sail and 
put to sea. On just such vessels did Deshneff and 
Staduchin attempt to round Asia from the Arctic into 
Bering Sea (1647-1650). 

To be sure, the first bang of the ice-floes against the 
prow of these rickety boats knocked them into kindling- 
wood. Two-thirds of the Cossack voyagers were lost 
every year; and often all news that came of the crew 
was a mast pole washed in by the tide with a dead man 
lashed to the crosstrees. Small store of fresh water 
could be carried. Pine needles were the only antidote 
for scurvy; and many a time the boat came tumbling 
back to the home port, not a man well enough to stand 
before the mast. 

Always it is what lies just beyond that lures. It is 
the unknown that beckons like the arms of the old sea 
sirens. Groping through the mists that hang like a 
shroud over these northern seas, hoar frosts clinging to 
masts and decks till the boat might have been some 
ghost ship in a fog world, the Cossack plunderers some- 



RUSSIAN AMERICAN FUR COMPANY 297 

times caught glimpses far ahead — twenty, thirty, forty 
miles eastward — of a black Hne along the sea. Was 
it land or fog, ice or deep water ? And when the wind 
blew from the east, strange land birds alighted on the 
yard-arms. Dead whales with the harpoons of strange 
hunters washed past the ship ; and driftwood of a kind 
that did not grow in Asia tossed up on the tide wrack. 
It was the word brought back by these free-lances of 
the sea that induced Peter the Great to send Vitus 
Bering on a voyage of discovery to the west coast of 
America; and when the castaways of Bering's wreck 
returned with a new fur that was neither beaver nor 
otter, but larger than either and of a finer sheen than 
sable, selling the pelts to Chinese merchants for what 
would be from one hundred and fifty to two hundred 
dollars each in modern money, the effect was the same 
as the discovery of a gold mine. The new fur was the 
sea-otter, as peculiar to the Pacific as the seal and 
destined to lead the Cossacks on a century's wild hunt 
from Alaska to California. Cossacks, Siberian mer- 
chants, exiled criminals, banded together in as wild a 
stampede to the west coast of America as ever a gold 
mine caused among civilized men of a later day. 

The little kotches that used to cruise out from Si- 
berian rivers no longer served. Siberian merchants 
advanced the capital for the building of large sloops. 
Cargo of trinkets for trade with American Indians was 
supplied in the same way. What would be fifty thou- 
sand dollars in modern money, it took to build and 



298 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

equip one of these sloops ; but a cargo of sea-otter was 
to be had for the taking — barring storms that yearly 
engulfed two-thirds of the hunters, and hostile Indians 
that twice wiped Russian settlements from the coast of 
America — and if these pelts sold for one hundred and 
fifty dollars each, the returns were ample to compensate 
risk and outlay. Provisions, cordage, iron, ammuni- 
tion, firearms, all had to be brought from St. Peters- 
burg, seven thousand miles to the Pacific coast. From 
St. Petersburg to Moscow, Kasan, the Tartar desert 
and Siberia, pack horses were used. It was a common 
thing for caravans of four or even five thousand pack 
horses employed by the Russian fur traders of America 
to file into Irkutsk of a night. At the head waters of 
the Lena, rafts and flatboats, similar to the old Macki- 
naw boats of American fur traders on the Missouri, 
were built and the cargo floated down to Yakutsk, the 
great rendezvous of Siberian fur traders. Here exiles 
acting as packers and Cossacks as overseers usually 
went on a wild ten days' spree. From Yakutsk pack 
horses, dog trains, and reindeer teams were employed 
for the remaining thousand miles to the Pacific; and 
this was the hardest part of the journey. Mountains 
higher than the Rockies had to be traversed. Moun- 
tain torrents tempestuous with the spring thaw had to be 
forded — ice cold and to the armpits of the drivers; 
and in winter time, the packs of timber wolves follow- 
ing on the heels of the cavalcade could only be driven 
off by the hounds kept to course down grouse and hare 



RUSSIAN AMERICAN FUR COMPANY 299 

for the evening meal. If an exile forced to act as 
transport packer fell behind, that was the last of him. 
The Russian fur traders of America never paused in 
their plans for a hfe more or less. Ordinarily it took 
three years for goods sent from St. Petersburg to reach 
the Pacific; and this was only a beginning of the hard- 
ships. The Pacific had to be crossed, and a coast 
lined with reefs like a ploughed field traversed for two 
thousand miles among Indians notorious for their 
treachery. 

The vessels were usually crammed with traps and 
firearms and trinkets to the water-line. The crews 
of forty, or seventy, or one hundred were relegated to 
vermin-infested hammocks above decks, with short 
rations of rye bread and salt fish, and such scant supply 
of fresh water that scurvy invariably ravaged the ship 
whenever foul weather lengthened the passage. Hav- 
ing equipped the vessel, the Siberian merchants passed 
over the management to the Cossacks, whose pretence 
of conquering new realms and collecting tribute for 
the Czar was only another excuse for the same plunder 
in gathering sea-otter as their predecessors had prac- 
tised in hunting the sable. Landsmen among Sibe- 
rian exiles were enlisted as crew of their own free will 
at first, but afterward, when the horrors of wreck and 
scurvy and massacre became known, both exiles and 
Indians were impressed by force as fur hunters for the 
Cossacks. If the voyage were successful, half the pro- 



joo VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

ceeds went to the outfitter, the remaining half to Cos- 
sacks and crew. 

The boats usually sailed in the fall, and wintered 
on Bering Island. Here stores of salted meat, sea- 
lion and sea-cow, were laid up, and the following 
spring the ship steered for the Aleutians, or the main 
coast of Alaska, or the archipelago round the modern 
Sitka. Sloops were anchored offshore fully armed 
for refuge in case of attack. Huts were then con- 
structed of driftw^ood on land. Toward the east and 
south, where the Indians were treacherous and made 
doubly so by the rum and firearms of rival traders, 
palisades were thrown up round the fort, a sort of 
balcony erected inside with brass cannon mounted 
where a sentry paraded day and night, ringing a bell 
every hour in proof that he was not asleep. West- 
ward toward the Aleutians, where driftwood was 
scarce, the Russians built their forts in one of two 
places : either a sandy spit where the sea protected 
them on three sides, as at Captain Harbor, Oona- 
laska, and St. Paul, Kadiak, or on a high, rocky emi- 
nence only approachable by a zigzag path at the top 
of which stood cannon and sentry, as at Cook's Inlet. 
Chapel and barracks for the hunters might be outside 
the palisade: but the main house was inside, a single 
story with thatch roof, a door at one end, a rough 
table at the other. Sleeping berths with fur bedding 
were on the side walls, and every other available piece 
of wall space bristled with daggers and firearms ready 



RUSSIAN AMERICAN FUR COMPANY 301 

for use. It the house was a double-decker, as 
Baranof Castle at Sitka, powder was stored in the 
cellar. Counting-rooms, mess room, and fur stores 
occupied the first floor. Sleeping quarters were up- 
stairs, and, above all, a powerful light hung in the 
cupola, to guide ships into port at night. 

But these arrangements concerned only the Cossack 
officers of the early era, or the governors like Baranof, 
of a later day. The rank and file of the crews were 
off on the hunting-grounds with the Indians; and the 
hunting-grounds of the sea-otter were the storm-beaten 
kelp beds of the rockiest coast in the world. Going 
out in parties of five or six, the promyshleniki, as the 
hunters were called, promised implicit obedience to 
their foreman. Store of vension would be taken in a 
preliminary hunt. Indian women and children would 
be left at the Russian fort as hostages of good conduct, 
and at the head of as many as four, five hundred, a 
thousand Aleut Indian hunters who had been bludg- 
eoned, impressed, bribed by the promise of firearms 
to hunt for the Cossacks, six Russians would set 
out to coast a tempestuous sea for a thousand miles 
in frail boats made of parchment stretched on whale- 
bone. Sometimes a counter-tide would sweep a whole 
flotilla out to sea, when never a man of the hunting 
crew would be heard of more. Sometimes, when the 
hunters were daring a gale, riding in on the back of 
a storm to catch the sea-otter driven ashore to the kelp 
beds for a rest, the back-wash of a billow, or a sudden 



302 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

hurricane of wind raising mountain seas, would crash 
down on the brigade. When the spray cleared, the 
few panic-stricken survivors were washing ashore too 
exhausted to be conscious that half their comrades 
had gone under. Absurd as it seems that these plun- 
derers of the deep always held prayers before going 
off on a hunt — is it any wonder they prayed ^ It 
was in such brigades that the Russian hunters cruised 
the west coast of America from Bering Sea to the Gulf 
of California, and the whole northwest coast of 
America is punctuated with saints' names from the 
Russian calendar; for, like Drake's freebooters, they 
had need to pray. 

Fur companies world over have run the same course. 
No sooner has game become scarce on the hunting- 
grounds, than rivals begin the merry game of slitting 
one another's throats, or instigating savages to do the 
butchering for them. That was the record of the 
Hudson's Bay Company and Nor'westers in Can- 
ada, and the Rocky Mountain men and American 
Company on the Missouri. Four years after Bering's 
crew had brought back word of the sea-otter in 1742, 
there were seventy-seven different private Russian 
concerns hunting sea-otter off the islands of Alaska. 
Fifty years later, after Cook, the English navigator, 
had spread authentic news of the wealth in furs to be 
had on the west coast of America, there were sixty 
different fur companies on the Pacific coast carrying 




John Jacob Astor. 



RUSSIAN AMERICAN FUR COMPANY 303 

almost as many different flags. John Jacob Astor's 
ships had come round the Horn from New York and, 
saihng right into the Russian hunting-grounds, were 
endeavoring to make arrangements to furnish sup- 
pHes to the Russians in exchange for cargoes of the fur- 
seals, whose rookeries had been discovered about the 
time sea-otter began to be scarce. Kendrick, Gray, 
Ingraham, Coolidge, a dozen Boston men were thread- 
ing the shadowy, forested waterways between New 
Spain and Alaska.^ Ships from Spain, from France, 
from London, from Canton, from Bengal, from Aus- 
tria, were on the west coast of America. The effect 
was twofold : sea-otter were becoming scarce from 
being slaughtered indiscriminately, male and female, 
young and old; the fur trade was becoming bedevilled 
from rival traders using rum among the savages. The 
life of a fur trader on the Pacific coast was not worth 
a pin's purchase fifty yards away from the cannon 
mouths pointed through the netting fastened round 
the deck rails to keep savages off ships. Just as Lord 
Selkirk indirectly brought about the consolidation of 
the Hudson's Bay fur traders with Nor'westers, 
and John Jacob Astor attempted the same ends be- 
tween the St. Louis and New York companies, so a 
master mind arose among the Russians, grasping the 
situation, and ready to cope with its difficulties. 

This was Gregory Ivanovich Shelikoff, a fur trader 

1 Over one hundred American ships had been on the Pacific coast of America 
before 1812. 



304 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

of Siberia, accompanied to America and seconded by 
his wife, Natalie, who succeeded in carr)'ing out many 
of his plans after his death. ShelikofF owned shares 
in two of the principal Russian companies. When he 
came to America accompanied by his wife, Baranof, 
another trader, and two hundred men in 1784, the 
Russian headquarters were still at Oonalaska in the 
Aleutians. Only desultory expeditions had gone east- 
ward. Foreign ships had already come among the 
Russian hunting-grounds of the north. These Sheli- 
kofF at once checkmated by moving Russian head- 
quarters east to Three Saints, Kadiak. Savages warned 
him from the island, threatening death to the Aleut 
Indian hunters he had brought. Shelikoff's answer was 
a load of presents to the hostile messenger. That fail- 
ing, he took advantage of an eclipse of the sun as a 
sign to the superstitious Indians that the coming of 
the Russians was noted and blessed of Heaven. The 
unconvinced Kadiak savages responded by ambush- 
ing the first Russians to leave camp, and showering 
arrows on the Russian boats. Shelikoff gathered up 
his men, sallied forth, whipped the Indians off their 
feet, took four hundred prisoners, treated them well, 
and so won the friendship of the islanders. From the 
new quarters hunters were despatched eastward under 
Baranof and others as far as what is now Sitka. These 
yearly came back with cargoes of sea-otter worth two 
hundred thousand dollars. Shelikoff at once saw that 
if the Russian traders were to hold their own against 



RUSSIAN AMERICAN FUR COMPANY 305 

the foreign adventurers of all nations flocking to the 
Pacific, headquarters must be moved still farther east- 
wsLvdy and the prestige of the Russian government 
invoked to exclude foreigners. There were, in fact, 
no limits to the far-sighted ambitions of the man. 
Ships were to be despatched to California setting up 
signs of Russian possession. Forts in Hawaii could 
be used as a mid-Pacific arsenal and halfway house 
for the Russian fleet that was to dominate the North 
Pacific. A second Siberia on the west coast of 
America, with limits eastward as vague as the Hud- 
son's Bay Company's claims westward, was to be 
added to the domains of the Czar. Whether the idea 
of declaring the North Pacific a closed sea as Spain 
had declared the South Pacific a closed sea till Francis 
Drake opened it, originated in the brain of ShelikofF, 
or his successors, is immaterial. It was the aggran- 
dizement of the Russian American Fur Company as 
planned by Shelikoff from 1784 to 1796, that led to 
the Russian government trying to exclude foreign 
traders from the North Pacific twenty-five years later, 
and which in turn led to the declaration of the famous 
Monroe Doctrine by the United States in 1823 — that 
the New World was no longer to be the happy hunting- 
ground of Old World nations bent on conquest and 
colonization. 

Like many who dream greatly, ShelikofF did not 
live to see his plans carried out. He died in Irkutsk 
in 1795; but in St. Petersburg, when pressing upon 



3o6 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

the government the necessity of uniting all the indepen- 
dent traders in one all-powerful company to be given 
exclusive monopoly on the west coast of America, he 
had met and allied himself with a young courtier, 
Nikolai RezanofF/ When Shelikoff died, Rezanoff it 
was who obtained from the Czar in 1799 a charter for 
the Russian American Fur Company, giving it ex- 
clusive monopoly for hunting, trading, and exploring 
north of 55° in the Pacific. Other companies were 
compelled either to withdraw or join. Royalty took 
shares in the venture. Shareholders of St. Peters- 
burg were to direct aflPairs, and Baranof, the governor, 
resident in America, to have power of life and death, 
despotic as a czar. By 1800 the capital of Russian 
America had been moved down to the modern Sitka, 
called Archangel Michael in the trust of the Lord's 
anointed protecting these plunderers of the sea. Sheli- 
koff's dreams w^ere coming true. Russia was check- 
mating the advances of England and the United States 
and New Spain. Schemes were in the air with Bara- 
nof for the impressment of Siberian exiles as peasant 
farmers among the icebergs of Prince William Sound, 
for the remission of one-tenth tribute in furs from the 
Aleuts on condition of free service as hunters with the 
company, and for the employment of Astor's ships as 
purveyors of provisions to Sitka, when there fell a bolt 

1 Rezanoff married the fur trader's daughter. The bride did not live long ; nor 
does the union seem to have been a love affair; as Rezanoff's infatuation with the 
daughter of a Spanish don later seemed to indicate a heart-free lover. 



RUSSIAN AMERICAN FUR COMPANY 307 

from the blue that well-nigh wiped Russian possession 
from the face of America. 

It was a sleepy summer afternoon toward the end 
of June in 1802. Baranof had left a guard of twenty 
or thirty Russians at Sitka and, confident that all was 
well, had gone north to Kadiak. Aleut Indians, im- 
pressed as hunters, were about the fort, for the fiery 
Kolosh or Sitkans of this region would not bow the 
neck to Russian tyranny. Safe in the mountain fast- 
nesses behind the fort, they refused to act as slaves. 
How they regarded this invasion of their hunting- 
ground by alien Indians — Indians acting as slaves 
— may be guessed.^ Whether rival traders, deserters 
from an American ship, living with the Sitkan Indians, 
instigated the conspiracy cannot be known. I have 
before me letters written by a fur trader of a rival com- 
pany at that time, declaring if a certain trader did not 
cease his methods, that ^^ pills would he bought at 
Montreal with as good poison as pills from London;'* 
and the sentiment of the writer gives a true idea of the 
code that prevailed among American fur traders. 

The fort at that time occupied a narrow strip between 
a dense forest and the rocky water front a few miles 
north of the present site. Whether the renegade 
American sailors living in the forests with the Kolosh 
betrayed all the inner plans of the fort, or the squaws 
daily passing in and out with berries kept their country- 

1 See Chapter XII. • 



3o8 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

men informed of Russian movements, the blow was 
struck when the whites were off guard. It was a hoh- 
day. Half the Russians were outside the palisades 
unarmed, fishing. The remaining fifteen men seem 
to have been upstairs about midday in the rooms of 
the commander, MedvednikofF. Suddenly the sleepy 
sentry parading the balcony noticed Michael, chief 
of the Kolosh, standing on the shore shouting at sixty 
canoes to land quickly. Simultaneously the patter 
of moccasined feet came from the dense forest to the 
rear — a thousand Kolosh warriors, every Indian 
armed and wearing the death-mask of battle. Before 
the astounded sentry could sound an alarm, such a 
hideous uproar of shouts arose as might have come from 
bedlam let loose. The Indian always imitates the 
cries of the wild beast when he fights — imitates or sets 
free the wild beast in his own nature. For a moment 
the Russians were too dumfounded to collect their 
senses. Then women and children dashed for refuge 
upstairs in the main building, huddling over the trap- 
door in a frenzy of fright. Russians outside the pali- 
sades ran for the woods, some to fall lanced through 
the back as they raced, others to reach shelter of the 
dense forest, where they lay for eight days under hiding 
of bark and moss before rescue came. Medved- 
nikofF, the commander, and a dozen others, seem to 
have hurled themselves downstairs at the first alarm, 
but already the outer doors had been rammed. The 
panels of the inner door were slashed out. A flare of 



RUSSIAN AMERICAN FUR COMPANY 309 

musketry met the Russians full in the face. The de- 
fenders dropped to a man, fearless in death as in life, 
though one wounded fellow seems to have dragged 
himself to the balcony where he succeeded in firing off 
the cannon before he was thrown over the palisades, to 
be received on the hostiles' upturned spears. Mean- 
while wads of burning birch bark and moss had been 
tossed into the fort on the powder magazines. A high 
wind fanned the flames. A terrific explosion shook 
the fort. The trap-door where the women huddled 
upstairs gave way. Half the refugees fell through, 
where they were either butchered or perished in the 
flames. The others plunged from the burning build- 
ing through the windows. A few escaped to the woods. 
The rest — Aleut women, wives of the Russians — 
were taken captive by the Kolosh. Ships, houses, 
fortress, all were in flames. By nightfall nothing 
remained of Sitka but the brass and iron of the 
melted cannon. The hostiles had saved loot of some 
two thousand sea-otter skins. 

All that night, and for eight days and nights, the 
refugees of the forest lay hidden under bark and moss. 
Under cover of darkness, one, a herdsman, ventured 
down to the charred ruins of Sitka. The mangled, 
headless bodies of the Russians lay in the ashes. At 
noon of the eighth day the mountains suddenly rocked 
to the echo of two cannon-shots from the bay. A ship 
had come. Three times one Russian ventured to the 
shore, and three times was chased back to the woods; 



3IO VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

but he had seen enough. The ship was an Enghsh 
trader under Captain Barber, who finally heard the 
shouts of the pursued man, put off a small boat and 
rescued him. Three others were saved from the woods 
in the same way, but had been only a few days on the 
ship, when Michael, the Kolosh chief, emboldened 
by success, rowed out with a young warrior and asked 
the English captain to give up the Russians. Barber 
affected not to understand, lured both Indians on 
board, seized them, put them in irons, and tied them 
across a cannon mouth, when he demanded the res- 
toration of all captives and loot; but the Sitkan chief 
probably had his own account of who suggested the 
massacre. Also it was to the English captain's inter- 
ests to remain on good terms with the Indians. Any- 
way, the twenty captives were not restored till two 
other ships had entered port, and sent some Kolosh 
canoes to bottom with grape-shot. The savages were 
then set free, and hastening up to Kadiak, Barber 
levelled his cannon at the Russian fort and demanded 
thirty-seven thousand five hundred dollars' salvage for 
the rescue of the captives and loot. Baranof haggled 
the Englishman tired, and compromised for one-fifth the 
demand. 

Two years passed, and the fur company was power- 
less to strike an avenging blow. Wherever the Rus- 
sians led Aleuts into the Kolosh hunting-grounds, 
there had been ambush and massacre; but Baranof 



RUSSIAN AMERICAN FUR COMPANY 311 

bided his time. The Aleut Indian hunters, who had 
become panic-stricken, gradually regained sufficient 
courage again to follow the Russians eastward. By 
the spring of 1804 Baranof's men had gathered up 
eight hundred Aleut Indians, one hundred and twenty 
Russian hunters, four small schooners, and two sloops. 
The Indians in their light boats of sea-lion skin on 
whalebone, the Russians in their sail-boats, Baranof 
set out in April from St. Paul, Kadiak, with his thousand 
followers to wreak vengeance on the tribes of Sitka. 
Sea-otter were hunted on the way, so that it was well 
on in September before the brigades entered Sitka 
waters. Meanwhile aid from an unexpected quarter 
had come to the fur company. Lieutenant Krusen- 
stern had prevailed on the Russian government to 
send supplies to the Russian American Company by 
two vessels around the world instead of caravans across 
Siberia. With Krusenstern went RezanofF, who had 
helped the fur traders to obtain their charter, and was 
now commissioned to open an embassy to Japan. The 
second vessel under Captain Lisiansky proceeded at 
once to Baranof's aid at Sitka. 

Baranof was hunting when Lisiansky's man-of-war 
entered the gloomy wilds of Sitka Sound. The fur 
company's two sloops lay at anchor with lanterns 
swinging bow and stern to guide the hunters home. 
The eight hundred hostiles had fortified themselves 
behind the site of the modern Sitka. Palisades the 
depth of two spruce logs ran across the front of the 



312 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

rough barricade, loopholed for musketry, and pro- 
tected by a sort of cheval-de-frise of brushwood and 
spines. At the rear of the enemy's fort ran sally ports 
leading to the ambush of the woods, and inside were 
huts enough to house a small town. By the 28th of 
September Baranof's Aleut Indian hunters had come 
in and camped alongshore under protection of can- 
non sent close inland on a small boat. It was a 
weird scene that the Russian officers witnessed, the 
enemy's fort, unlighted and silent as death, the Aleut 
hunters alongshore dancing themselves into a frenzy 
of bravado, the spruce torches of the coast against the 
impenetrable forest like fireflies in a thicket; an occa- 
sional fugitive canoe from the enemy attempting to 
steal through the darkness out of the harbor, only to 
be blown to bits by a cannon-shot. The ships began 
to line up and land field-pieces for action, when a 
Sitkan came out with overtures of peace. Baranof 
gave him the present of a gay coat, told him the fort 
must be surrendered, and chiefs sent to the Russians 
as hostages of good conduct. Thirty warriors came 
the next day, but the whites insisted on chiefs as hos- 
tages, and the braves retired. On October the first 
a white flag was run up on the ship of war. No signal 
answered from the barricade. The Russian ships let 
blaze all the cannon simultaneously, only to find that 
the double logs of the barricade could not be pene- 
trated. No return fire came from the Sitkans. Two 
small boats were then landed to destroy the enemy's 



RUSSIAN AMERICAN FUR COMPANY 313 

stores. Still not a sign from the barricade. Raging 
with impatience, Baranof went ashore supported by 
one hundred and fifty men, and with a wild halloo led 
the way to rush the fort. The hostile Sitkans husbanded 
their strength with a coolness equal to the famous thin 
red line of British fame. Not a signal, not a sound, 
not the faintest betrayal of their strength or weakness 
till in the dusk Baranof was within gunshot of the logs, 
when his men were met with a solid wall of fire. The 
Aleuts stopped, turned, stampeded. Out sallied the 
Sitkans pursuing Russians and Aleuts to the water's 
edge, where the body of one dead Russian was bran- 
dished on spear ends. In the sortie fourteen of the 
Russian forces were killed, twenty-six wounded, among 
whom was Baranof, shot through the shoulder. The 
guns of the war ship were all that saved the retreat 
from a panic. 

Lisiansky then undertook the campaign, letting 
drive such a brisk fire the next day that the Sitkans 
came suing for peace by the afternoon. Three days 
the cunning savages stayed the Russian attack on pre- 
tence of arranging hostages. Hailing the fort on the 
morning of the 6th and securing no answer, Lisiansky 
again played his cannon on the barricade. That 
night a curious sound, that was neither chant nor war- 
cry, came from the thick woods. At daylight carrion 
crows were seen circling above the barricade. Three 
hundred Russians landed. Approaching cautiously 
for fear of ambuscade, they clambered over the pali- 



314 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

sades and lookedc The fort was deserted. Naught 
of the Sitkans remained but thirty dead warriors and 
all their children, murdered during the night to pre- 
vent their cries betraying the retreat. 

New Archangel, as it was called, was built on the 
site of the present Sitka. Sixteen short and forty-two 
long cannon mounted the walls. As many as seven 
hundred officers and men were sometimes on garrison 
duty. Twelve officers frequently dined at the gov- 
ernor's table; and here, in spite of bishops and priests 
and deacons who later came on the ground, the revel- 
lers of the Russian fur hunters held high carnival. 
Thirty-six forts and twelve vessels the Russian Ameri- 
can fur hunters owned twenty years after the loss of 
Sitka. New Archangel became more important to 
the Pacific than San Francisco. Nor was it a mistake 
to move the capital so far south. Within a few years 
Russian traders and their Indians were north as far 
as the Yukon, south hunting sea-otter as far as Santa 
Barbara. To enumerate but a few of the American 
vessels that yearly hunted sea-otter for the Russians 
southward of Oregon and California, taking in pay 
skins of the seal islands, would fill a coasting list. 
Rezanoff, who had failed to open the embassy to Japan 
and so came across to America, spent two months in 
Monterey and San Francisco trying to arrange with 
the Spaniards to supply the Russians with provisions. 
He was received coldly by the Spanish governor till 



1 WHPPMHK ;. 




JHi 






2 




J^k" " :^^|^ W-~^W' nK^'^ 





RUSSIAN AMERICAN FUR COMPANY 315 

a love affair sprang up with the daughter of the don, 
so ardent that the Russian must depart post-haste 
across Siberia for the Czar's sanction to the marriage. 
Worn out by the midwinter journey, he died on his 
way across Siberia. 

Later, in 18 12, when the Russian coasters were refused 
watering privileges at San Francisco, the Russian Ameri- 
can Company bought land near Bodega, and settled 
their famous Ross, or California colony, with cannon, 
barracks, arsenal, church, workshops, and sometimes 
a population of eight hundred Kadiak Indians. Here 
provisions were gathered for Sitka, and hunters de- 
spatched for sea-otter of the south. The massacres 
on the Yukon and the clashes with the Hudson's Bay 
traders are a story by themselves. The other doings 
of these "Sea Voyagers" became matters of inter- 
national history when they tried to exclude American 
and British traders from the Pacific. The fur hunters 
in the main were only carrying out the far-reaching 
plans of Shelikoff, who originated the charter for the 
company; but even Shelikoff could hardly foresee that 
the country which the Russian government was willing 
to sell to the United States in 1867 for seven million 
dollars, would produce more than twice that during a 
single year in gold. To-day all that remains to Russia 
of these sea voyagers' plundering are two small islands, 
Copper and Bering in Bering Sea. 



CHAPTER XII 

1747-1818 

BARANOF, THE LITTLE CZAR OF THE PACIFIC 

Baranof lays the Foundations of Russian Empire on the Pacific Coast 
of America — Shipwrecked on his Way to Alaska, he yet holds 
his Men in Hand and turns the Ill-hap to Advantage — How he 
blufFs the Rival Fur Companies in Line — First Russian Ship built 
in America — Adventures leading the Sea-otter Hunters — Am- 
bushed by the Indians — The Founding of Sitka — Baranof, cast 
off in his Old Age, dies of Broken Heart 

No wilder lord of the wild northland ever existed 
than that old madcap Viking of the Pacific, Alex- 
ander Baranof, governor of the Russian fur traders. 
For thirty years he ruled over the west coast of America 
from Alaska to southern California despotic as a czar. 
And he played the game single-handed, no retinue but 
convicts from Siberia, no subjects but hostile Indians. 

Whether leading the hunting brigades of a thousand 
men over the sea in skin canoes light as cork, or rally- 
ing his followers ambushed by hostiles repelling in- 
vasion of their hunting-ground, or drowning hardships 
with seas of fiery Russian brandy in midnight carou- 
sals, Baranof was supreme autocrat. Drunk or 

316 




Alexander Baranof. 



BARANOF, THE LITTLE CZAR 317 

sober, he was master of whatever came, mutineers or 
foreign traders planning to oust Russians from the 
coast of America. Baranof stood for all that was best 
and all that was worst in that heroic period of Pacific 
coast history when adventurers from all corners of the 
earth roamed the otter-hunting grounds in quest of 
fortune. Each man was a law unto himself. There 
was fear of neither man nor devil. The whole era 
might have been a page from the hero epic of prehis- 
toric days when earth was young, and men ranged the 
seas unhampered by conscience or custom, magnificent 
beasts of prey, glorying in freedom and bloodshed and 
the warring elements. 

Yet in person Baranof was far from a hero. He 
was wizened, sallow, small, a margin of red hair round 
a head bald as a bowl, grotesque under a black wig 
tied on with a handkerchief. And he had gone up in 
life much the way a monkey climbs, by shifts and 
scrambles and prehensile hoists with frequent falls. 
It was an ill turn of fortune that sent him to America 
in the first place. He had been managing a glass 
factory at Irkutsk, Siberia, where the endless caravans 
of fur traders passed. Born at Kargopol, East Russia, 
in 1747, he had drifted to Moscow, set up in a shop for 
himself at twenty-four, failed in business, and emigrated 
to Siberia at thirty-five. Tales of profit in the fur 
trade were current at Irkutsk. Tired of stagnating in 
what was an absolutely safe but unutterably monoto- 
nous life, Baranof left the factory and invested all his 



3i8 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

savings in the fur trade to the Indians of northern 
Siberia and Kamchatka. For some years all went 
well. Baranof invested deeper, borrowing for his 
ventures. Then the Chukchee Indians swooped down 
on his caravans, stampeded the pack horses, scuttled 
the goods, and Baranof was a bankrupt. The rival 
fur companies on the west coast of America were now 
engaged in the merry game of cutting each other's 
throats — literally and without restraint. A strong hand 
was needed — a hand that could weld the warring ele- 
ments into one, and push Russian trade far down from 
Alaska to New Spain, driving off the field those foreigners 
whose relentless methods — liquor, bludgeon, musket — 
were demoralizing the Indian sea-otter hunters. 

Destitute and bankrupt, Baranof was offered one- 
sixth of the profits to become governor of the chief 
Russian company. On August lo, 1790, about the 
same time that John Jacob Astor also embarked in 
the fur trade that was to bring him in contact with 
the Russians, Baranof sailed to America. 

Fifty-two men the ragamuffin crew numbered, 
exiles, convicts, branded criminals, raggedly clad and 
ill-fed, sleeping wherever they could on the littered and 
vermin-infested decks; for what did the lives of a convict 
crew matter .? Below decks was crammed to the water- 
line with goods for trade. All thought for furs, small 
care for men; and a few days out from port, the water- 
casks were found to be leaking so badly that allowance 



BARANOF, THE LITTLE CZAR 319 

of drinking water was reduced; and before the equi- 
noctial gales, scurvy had already disabled the crew. 
Baranof did not turn back, nor allow the strong hand 
oT authority to relax over his men as poor Bering had. 
He ordered all press of sail, and with the winds whis- 
tling through the rigging and the little ship straining to 
the smashing seas, did his best to outspeed disease, 
sighting the long line of surf-washed Aleutian Islands 
in September, coasting from headland to headland, 
keeping well offshore for fear of reefs till the end of the 
month, when compelled to turn in to the mid-bay of 
Oonalaska for water. There was no ignoring the 
danger of the landing. A shore like the walls of a 
giant rampart with reefs in the teeth of a saw, lashed 
to a fury by beach combers, offered poor escape 
from death by scurvy. Nevertheless, Baranof effected 
anchorage at Koshigin Bay, sent the small boats 
ashore for water, watched his chance of a seaward 
breeze, and ran out to sea again in one desperate effort 
to reach Kadiak, the headquarters of the fur traders, 
before winter. Outside the shelter of the harbor, 
wind and seas met the ship. She was driven helpless 
as a chip in a whirlpool straight for the granite rocks 
of the shore, where she smashed to pieces like the 
broken staves of a dry water-barrel. Led by the in- 
domitable Baranof, who seemed to meet the challenge 
of the very elements, the half-drowned crew crawled 
ashore only to be ordered to save the cargo now rolling 
up in the wave wash. 



320 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

When darkness settled over the sea on the last night 
of September, Baranof was in the same predicament as 
Bering — a castaway for the winter on a barren island. 
Instead of sinking under the redoubled blows of an 
adverse fate, the little Russian rebounded like a rubber 
ball. A messenger and some Indians were at once 
despatched in a skin boat to coast from island to island 
in an effort to get help from Kadiak. Meanwhile 
Baranof did not sit lamenting with folded hands; and 
well that he did not; for his messengers never reached 
Kadiak. 

Holes were at once scooped out of the sand, and the 
caves roofed over with the remnants of the wreck. 
These underground huts on an island destitute of wood 
were warmer than surface cabins, and better withstood 
the terrible north winds that swept down from the 
Arctic with such force that for two months at a time 
the men could go outside only by crawling under 
shelter of the boulders. Ammunition was distributed 
to the fifty castaways ; salmon bought from the Indians, 
whom Baranof's fair treatment won from the first; 
once a week, rye meal was given out for soup ; and for 
the rest, the men had to depend on the eggs of sea- 
birds, that flocked over the precipitous shores in myr- 
iads, or on the sea-lions roaring till the surf shook 
on the rocky islets along the shore. 

If there is one characteristic more than another that 
proves a man master of destiny, it is ability not only to 
meet misfortune but to turn it to advantage when it 



BARANOF, THE LITTLE CZAR 321 

comes. While waiting for the rescue that never came, 
Baranof studied the language of the Aleuts, sent his 
men among them to learn to hunt, rode out to sea in 
their frail skin boats lashed abreast to keep from 
swamping during storm, slept at night on the beach 
with no covering but the overturned canoes, and, shar- 
ing every hardship, set traps with his own hands. 
When the weather was too boisterous for hunting, he 
set his people boiling salt from sea-water to dry supplies 
of fish for the summer, or replenishing their ragged 
clothes by making coats of birds' skin. The last week 
before Easter, provisions were so low the whole crew 
were compelled to indulge in a Lenten fast; but on 
Easter Monday, behold a putrid whale thrown ashore 
by the storm ! The fast was followed by a feast. The 
winds subsided, and hunters brought in sea-lions. 

It was quite apparent now no help was coming from 
Kadiak. Baranof had three large boats made of skin 
and wreckage. One he left with the men, who were to 
guard the remnants of the cargo. A second he de- 
spatched with twenty-six men. In the third he himself 
embarked, now in a raging fever from the exposure of 
the winter. A year all but a month from the time he 
had left Asia, Baranof reached Three Saints, Kadiak, 
on June 27, 1791. 

Things were black enough when Baranof landed at 
Kadiak. The settlement of Three Saints had been 
depending on the supplies of his wrecked ship; and 



322 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

when he arrived, himself in need, discontent flared to 
open mutiny. Five different rival companies had de- 
moralized the Indians by supplying them with liquor, 
and egging them on to raid other traders. Southward, 
toward Nootka, were hosts of foreign ships — Gray 
and Kendrick and Ingraham from Boston, Vancouver 
from England, Meares from East India, Quadra from 
New Spain, private ventures outfitted by Astor from 
New York. If Russia were to preserve her hunting- 
grounds, no time should be lost. 

Baranof met the difficulties like a commander of 
guerilla warfare. Brigades were sent eastward to the 
fishing-ground of Cook's Inlet for supplies. Incipient 
mutiny was quelled by sending more hunters off with 
Ismyloff to explore new sea-otter fields in Prince Will- 
iam Sound. As for the foreign fur traders, he con- 
ceived the brilliant plan of buying food from them in 
exchange for Russian furs and of supplying them with 
brigades of Aleut Island hunters to scour the Pacific 
for sea-otter from Nootka and the Columbia to southern 
California. This would not only add to stores of Rus- 
sian furs, but push Russian dominion southward, and 
keep other nations off the field. 

That it was not all plain sailing on a summer day 
may be inferred from one incident. He had led 
out a brigade of several hundred canoes, Indians and 
Russians, to Nuchek Island, off Prince William Sound. 
Though he had tried to win the friendship of the coast 
Indians by gifts, it was necessary to steal from point 



BARANOF, THE LITTLE CZAR 323 

to point at night, and to hide at many places as he 
coasted the mainland. Throwing up some sort of 
rough barricade at Nuchek Island, he sent the most of 
his men off to fish and remained with only sixteen 
Aleuts and Russians. It was perfectly natural that the 
Alaskan Indians should resent the Aleuts intruding on 
the hunting-grounds of the main coast, one thousand 
miles from the Aleutian Islands. Besides, the main- 
land Indians had now learned unscrupulous brutality 
from foreign traders. Baranof knew his danger and 
never relaxed vigilance. Of the sixteen men, five 
always stood sentry at night. 

The night of June 20 was pitch dark. Terrific seas 
were running, and a tempest raged through the woods 
of the mainland. For safety, Ismyloff's ship had 
scudded to the offing. Baranof had undressed, thrown 
himself down in his cabin, and was in the deep sleep of 
outdoor exhaustion, when above the howling of the 
gale, not five steps away, so close it was impossible to 
distinguish friend from foe in the darkness, arose the 
shrill war-cry of hostiles. Leaping to his feet, Baranof 
rushed out undressed. His shirt was torn to shreds 
by a shower of flint and copper-head arrows. In the 
dark, the Russians could only fire blindly. The panic- 
stricken Aleuts dashed for their canoes to escape to 
IsmylofF's ship. IsmylofF sent armed Russians through 
the surf wash and storm to Baranof's aid. Baranof 
kept his small cannon pounding hot shot where the 
shouts sounded till daylight. Of the sixteen men, two 



324 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

Russians and nine Aleuts were dead. Of the men 
who came to his aid, fifteen were wounded. The 
corpses of twelve hostiles lay on the beach; and as 
gray dawn came over the tempestuous sea, six large 
war canoes vanished into the morning mist, a long 
trail of blood over the waves showing that the hostiles 
were carrying off their wounded. Well might Baranof 
write, "I will vanquish a cruel fate; or fall under its 
repeated blows." The most of men would have 
thought they had sufficient excuse to justify backing 
out of their difficulties. Baranof locked grapples with 
the worst that destiny could do; and never once let 
go. Sometimes the absolute futility of so much striv- 
ing, so much hardship, so much peril, all for the sake 
of the crust of bread that represents mere existence, 
sent him down to black depths of rayless despondency, 
when he asked himself, was life worth while ? But he 
never let go his grip, his sense of resistance, his impulse 
to fight the worst, the unshunnable obligation of being 
alive and going on with the game, succeed or fail. 
Such fits of despair might end in wild carousals, when 
he drank every Russian under the table, outshouted 
the loudest singer, and perhaps wound up by throwing 
the roomful of revellers out of doors. But he rose 
from the depths of debauch and despair, and went on 
with the game. That was the main point. 

The terrible position to which loss of supplies had 
reduced the traders of Kadiak when his own vessel 



BARANOF, THE LITTLE CZAR 325 

was wrecked at Oonalaska on the way out, demon- 
strated to Baranof the need of more ships; so when 
orders came from his company in 1793 to construct a 
saihng boat on the timberless island of Kadiak without 
iron, without axes, without saw, without tar, without 
canvas, he was eager to attempt the impossible. 
Shields, an Englishman, in the employment of Russia, 
was to act as shipbuilder; and Baranof sent the men 
assigned for the work up to Sunday Harbor on the 
w-est side of Prince William Sound, where heavy forests 
would supply timber and the tide-rush help to launch 
the vessel from the skids. There were no saws in the 
settlement. Planks had to be hewn out of 1op:s. Iron, 
there was none. The rusty remnants of old wrecks 
were gathered together for bolts and joints and axes. 
Spruce gum mixed with blubber oil took the place of 
oakum and tar below the water-line. Moss and clay 
were used as calking above water. For sail cloth, 
there was nothing but shreds and rags and tatters of 
canvas patched together so that each mast-arm looked 
like Joseph's coat of many colors. Seventy-nine feet 
from stem to stern, the crazy craft measured, of twenty- 
three feet beam, thirteen draught, one hundred tons, two 
decks, and three masts. All the winter of 1 792-1 793, 
just a year after Robert Gray, the American, had built 
his sloop down at Fort Defence off Vancouver Island, 
the Russian shipbuilding went on. Then in April, 
lest the poverty of the Russians should become known 
to foreign traders, Baranof sent Shields, the English 



326 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

shipbuilder, off out of the way, on an otter-hunting 
venture. It was August of the next summer before the 
clumsy craft sHpped from the skids into the rising tide. 
She was so badly ballasted that she hobbled like cork; 
and her sails so frail they flew to tatters in the gentlest 
wind; but Russia had accomplished her first ship in 
America. Bells were set ringing when the Phcenix 
was towed into the harbor of Kadiak; and when she 
reached Okhotsk laden with furs to the water-line in 
April of 1794, enthusiasm knew no bounds. Salvos of 
artillery thundered over her sails, and mass was chanted, 
and a polish of paint given to her piebald, rickety sides 
that transformed her into what the fur company proudly 
regarded as a frigate. Before the year was out, Baranof 
had his men at work on two more vessels. There was 
to be no more crippling of trade for lack of ships. 

But a more serious matter than shipbuilding de- 
manded Baranof's attention. Rival fur companies 
were on the ground. Did one party of traders establish 
a fort on Cook's Inlet ? Forthwith came another to a 
point higher up the inlet, where Indians could be in- 
tercepted. There followed warlike raids, the pillaging 
of each other's forts, the capture of each other's Indian 
hunters, the utter demoralization of the Indians by 
each fort forbidding the savages to trade at the other, 
the flogging and bludgeoning and butchering of those 
who disobeyed the order — and finally, the forcible ab- 
duction of whole villages of women and children to com- 
pel the alliance of the hunters. All Baranof's work to 



BARANOF, THE LITTLE CZAR 327 

pacify the hostiles of the mainland was being undone; 
and what complicated matters hopelessly for him was 
the fact that the shareholders of his own company 
were also shareholders in the rival ventures. Baranof 
wrote to Siberia for instructions, urging the amalga- 
mation of all the companies in one; but instructions 
were so long in coming that the fur trade was being 
utterly bedevilled and the passions of the savages in- 
flamed to a point of danger for every white man on the 
North Pacific. Aff'airs were at this pass when Kono- 
valof, the dashing leader of the plunderers, planned to 
capture Baranof himself, and seize the shipyard at 
Sunday Harbor, on Prince William Sound. Baranof 
had one hundred and fitty fighting Russians in his 
brigades. Should he wait for the delayed instructions 
from Siberia ? While he hesitated, some of the ship- 
builders were ambushed in the woods, robbed, beaten, 
and left half dead. Baranof could not afford to wait. 
He had no more legal justification for his act than the 
plunderers had for theirs; but it was a case where a 
man must step outside law, or be exterminated. Rally- 
ing his men round him and taking no one into his con- 
fidence, the doughty little Russian sent a formal 
messenger to Konovalof, the bandit, at his redoubt on 
Cook's Inlet, pompously summoning him in the name 
of the governor of Siberia to appear and answer for his 
misdeeds. To the brigand, the summons was a bolt 
out of the blue. How was he to know not a word had 
come from the governor of Siberia, and the summons 



328 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

was sheer bluff? He was so terrorized at the long 
hand of power reaching across the Pacific to clutch 
him back to perhaps branding or penal service in 
Siberia, that he did not even ask to see Baranof's 
documents. Coming post-haste, he offered explana- 
tions, excuses, frightened pleadings. Baranof would 
have none of him. He clapped the culprit and asso- 
ciates in irons, put them on Ismyloff's vessel, and de- 
spatched them for trial to Siberia. That he also seized 
the furs of his rivals for safe keeping, was a mere 
detail. The prisoners were, of course, discharged ; 
for Baranof's conduct could no more bear scrutiny than 
their own; but it was one way to get rid of rivals; and 
the fur companies at war in the Canadian northwest 
practised the same method twenty years later. 

The effect of the bandit outrages on the hostile 
Indians of the mainland was quickly evident. Bara- 
nof realized that if he was to hold the Pacific coast 
for his company, he must push his hunting brigades 
east and south toward New Spain. A convict colony, 
that was to be the nucleus of a second St. Petersburg, 
was planned to be built under the very shadow of 
Mount St. Elias. Shields, the Englishman employed 
by Russia, after bringing back two thousand sea-otter 
from Bering Bay in 1793, had pushed on down south- 
eastward to Norfolk Sound or the modern Sitka, where 
he loaded a second cargo of two thousand sea-otter. 
A dozen foreign traders had already coasted Alaskan 
shores, and southward of Norfolk Sound was a flotilla 



BARANOF, THE LITTLE CZAR 329 

of American fur traders, yearly encroaching closer 
and closer on the Russian field. All fear of rivalry 
among the Russians had been removed by the union 
of the different companies in 1799. Baranof pulled 
his forces together for the master stroke that was to 
establish Russian dominion on the Pacific. This was 
the removal of the capital of Russian America farther 
south. 

On the second week of April, 1799, with two vessels, 
twenty-two Russians, and three hundred and fifty 
canoes of Aleut fur hunters, Baranof sailed from 
Prince William Sound for the southeast. Pause was 
made early in May opposite Kyak — Bering's old 
landfall — to hunt sea-otter. The sloops hung on 
the offing, the hunting brigades, led by Baranof in one 
of the big skin canoes, paddling for the surf wash and 
kelp fields of the boisterous, rocky coast, which sea- 
otter frequent in rough weather. Dangers of the hunt 
never deterred Baranof. The wilder the turmoil of 
spray and billows, the more sea-otter would be driven 
to refuge on the kelp fields. Cross tides like a whirl- 
pool ran on this coast when whipped by the winds. 
Not a sound from the sea-otter hunters ! Silently, 
like sea-birds glorying in the tempest, the canoes 
bounded from crest to crest of the rolling seas, always 
taking care not to be caught broadsides by the smash- 
ing combers, or swamped between waves in the 
churning seas. How it happened is not known, but 
somehow between wind and tide-rip, thirty of the canoes 



330 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

that rode over a billow and swept down to the trough 
never came up. A flaw of wind had caught the moun- 
tain billows; the sixty hunters went under. From 
where he was, Baranof saw the disaster, saw the terror 
of the other two hundred men, saw the rising storm, 
and at a glance measured that it was farther back to 
the sloops than on towards the dangerous shore. The 
sea-otter hunt was forgotten in the impending catas- 
trophe to the entire brigade. Signal and shout con- 
fused in the thunder of the surf ordered the men to 
paddle for their lives inshore. Night was coming on. 
The distance was longer than Baranof had thought, 
and it was dark before the brigades landed, and the 
men flung themselves down, totally exhausted, to sleep 
on the drenched sands. 

Barely were the hunters asleep when the shout of 
Kolosh Indians from the forests behind told of am- 
bush. The mainland hostiles resenting this invasion 
of their hunting-fields, had watched the storm drive 
the canoes to land. On one side was the tempest, on 
the other the forest thronged with warriors. The 
Aleuts lost their heads and dashed for hiding in the 
woods, only to find certain death. Baranof and the 
Russians with him fired off^ their muskets till all powder 
was used. Then they shouted in the Aleut dialect 
for the hunters to embark. The sea was the lesser 
danger. By morning the brigades had joined the 
sloops on the offing. Thirteen more canoes had been 
lost in the ambush. 



BARANOF, THE LITTLE CZAR 331 

Such was the inauspicious introduction for Baranof 
to the founding of the new Russian fort at Sitka or 
Norfolk Sound. It was the end of May before the 
brigades ghded into the sheltered, shadowy harbor, 
where ChirikofF's men had been lost fifty years before. 
A furious storm of snow and sleet raged over the har- 
bor. When the storm cleared, impenetrable forests 
were seen to the water-line, and great trunks of trees 
swirled out to sea. On the ocean side to the west. 
Mount Edgecumbe towered up a dome of snow. East- 
ward were the bare heights of Verstovoi; and count- 
less tiny islets gilded by the sun dotted the harbor. 
Baranof would have selected the site of the present 
Sitka, high, rocky and secure from attack, but the old 
Sitkan chief refused to sell it, bartering for glass beads 
and trinkets a site some miles north of the present town. 

Half the men were set to hunting and fishing, half 
to chopping logs for the new fort built in the usual 
fashion, with high palisades, a main barracks a hun- 
dred feet long in the centre, three stories high, with 
trap-doors connecting each story, cabins and hutches 
all round the inside of the palisades. Lanterns hung 
at the masthead of the sloops to recall the brigades each 
night; for Captain Cleveland, a Boston trader anchored 
in the harbor, forewarned Baranof of the Indians' treach- 
erous character, more dangerous now when demoral- 
ized by the rivalry of white traders, and in possession 
of the civilized man's weapons. Free distribution of 
liquor by unscrupulous sea-captains did not mend 



332 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

matters. Cleveland reported that the savages had so 
often threatened to attack his ship that he no longer 
permitted them on board; concealing the small number 
of his crew by screens of hides round the decks, trading 
only at a v^icket with cannon primed and muskets 
bristling through the hides above the taffrail. He 
warned Baranof's hunters not to be led off inland bear 
hunting, for the bear hunt might be a Sitkan Indian 
in decoy to trap the hunters into an ambush. Such 
a decoy had almost trapped Cleveland's crew, when 
other Indians were noticed in ambush. The new fort 
was christened Archangel. 

All went well as long as Baranof was on the ground. 
Sea-otter were obtained for worthless trinkets. Sen- 
tries paraded the gateway; so Baranof sailed back 
to Kadiak. The Kolosh or Sitkan tribes had only 
bided their time. That sleepy summer day of June, 
1802, when the slouchy Siberian convicts were off 
guard and Baranof two thousand miles away, the 
Indians fell on the fort and at one fell swoop wiped it 
out.^ Up at Kadiak honors were showering on the 
little governor. Two decorations of nobility he had 
been given by 1804; but his grief over the loss of Sitka 
was inconsolable. "I will either die or restore the 
fort!" he vowed, and with the help of a Russian man- 
of-war sent round the world, he sailed that summer 
into Sitka Sound. The Indians scuttled their barri- 
cade erected on the site of the present Sitka. Here 

1 See Chapter XI. 



BARANOF, THE LITTLE CZAR ;^;^;^ 

the fort was rebuilt and renamed New Archangel — a 
fort worthy in its palmy days of BaranoPs most daring 
ambitions. Sixty Russian officers and eight hundred 
white families lived within the walls, with a retinue of 
two or three thousand Indian otter hunters cabined 
along the beach. There was a shipyard. There was 
a foundry for the manufacture of the great brass bells 
sold for chapels in New Spain. There were arch- 
bishops, priests, deacons, schools. At the hot springs 
twenty miles away, hospitals and baths were built. 
A Hbrary and gallery of famous paintings were added 
to the fort, though Baranof complained it would have 
been wiser to have physicians for his men. For the 
rest of Baranof's rule, Sitka became the great rendez- 
vous of vessels trading on the Pacific. Here Baranof 
held sway like a potentate, serving regal feasts to all 
visitors with the pomp of a little court, and the bar- 
barity of a wassailing mediaeval lord. 

But all this was not so much fireworks for display. 
Baranof had his motive. To the sea-captains who 
feasted with him and drank themselves torpid under 
his table, he proposed a plan — he would supply the 
Aleut hunters for them to hunt on shares as far south 
as southern California. Always, too, he was an eager 
buyer of their goods, giving them in exchange seal- 
skins from the Seal Islands. Boston vessels were the 
first to enter partnership with Baranof. Later came 
Astor's captains from New York, taking sealskins in 
trade for goods supplied to the Russians. 



334 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

How did Baranof, surrounded by hostile Indians, 
with no servants but Siberian convicts, hold his own 
single-handed in American wilds ? Simply by the 
power of his fitness, by vigilance that never relaxed, 
by despotism that was by turns savage and gentle, but 
always paternal, by the fact that his brain and his 
brawn were always more than a match for the brain 
and brawn of all the men under him. To be sure, 
the liberal measure of seventy-nine lashes was laid 
on the back of any subordinate showing signs of 
mutiny, but that did not prevent many such at- 
tempts. 

The most serious was in 1809. From the time that 
Benyowsky, the Polish adventurer, had sacked the 
garrison of Kamchatka, Siberian convicts serving in 
America dreamed of similar exploits. Peasants and 
officers, a score in number, all convicts from Siberia, 
had plotted to rise in New Archangel or Sitka, assas- 
sinate the governor, seize ships and provisions, and 
sailing to some of the South Sea Islands, set up an 
independent government. The signal was to be given 
when Naplavkof, an officer who was master plotter, 
happened to be on duty. On such good terms was 
the despot, Baranof, with his men, that the plot was 
betrayed to him from half a dozen sources. It did 
not trouble Baranof. He sent the betrayers a keg of 
brandy, bade one of them give a signal by breaking 
out in drunken song, and at the sound himself burst 
into the roomful of conspirators, sword in hand, fol- 



BARANOF, THE LITTLE CZAR 22s 

lowed by half a hundred armed soldiers. The plotters 
were handcuffed and sent back to Siberia. 

There was something inexcusably cruel in the ter- 
mination of Baranof's services with the fur company. 
He was now over seventy years of age. He was tor- 
tured by rheumatism from the long years of exposure 
in a damp climate. Because he was not of noble birth, 
though he had received title of nobility, he was sub- 
ject to insults at the hands of any petty martinet who 
came out as officer on the Russian vessels. Against 
these Baranof usually held his own at Sitka, but they 
carried back to St. Petersburg slanderous charges 
against his honesty. Twice he had asked to be al- 
lowed to resign. Twice successors had been sent 
from Russia; but one died on the way, and the other 
was shipwrecked. It was easy for malignant tongues 
to rouse suspicion that Baranof's desire to resign 
sprang from interested motives, perhaps from a wish 
to conceal his own peculations. Though Baranof had 
annually handled millions of dollars' worth of furs for 
the Russian Company, at a distance from oversight 
that might have defied detection in wrong-doing, it 
was afterwards proved that he had not misused or 
misappropriated one dime's worth of property; but 
who was to believe his honesty in the face of false 
charges .? 

In the fall of 18 17 Lieutenant Hagemeister arrived 
at Sitka to audit the books of the company. Conceal- 
ing from Baranof the fact that he was to be deposed, 



236 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

Hagemeister spent a year investigating the records. 
Not a discrepancy was discovered. Baranof, w^ith the 
opportunity to have made miUions, was a poor man. 
Without explanation, Hagemeister then announced 
the fact — Baranof was to be retired. Between volun- 
tarily retiring and being retired was all the difference 
between honor and insult. The news was a blow that 
crushed Baranof almost to senility. He was found 
doddering and constantly in tears. Again and again 
he bade good-by to his old comrades, comrades of 
revel with noble blood in their veins, comrades of the 
hunt, pure-blooded Indians, who loved him as a 
brother, comrades of his idleness, Indian children 
with whom he had frolicked — but he could not bear 
to tear himself from the land that was the child of his 
lifelong efforts. The blow had fallen when he was 
least able to bear it. His nerve was gone. Of all the 
Russian wreckages in this cruel new land, surely this 
wreck was the most pitiable — the maker deposed by 
the thing he had made, cast out by his child, driven 
to seek some hidden place where he might die out of 
sight. An old sea-captain offered him passage round 
the world to Russia, where his knowledge might still 
be of service. Service ^ That was the word ! The 
old war-horse pricked up his ears ! Baranof sailed in 
the fall of 1818. By spring the ship homeward-bound 
stopped at Batavia. There was some delay. Delay 
was not good for Baranof. He was ill, deadly ill, of 
that most deadly of all ailments, heartbreak, conscious- 



BARANOF, THE LITTLE CZAR 337 

ness that he was of no more use, what the Indians call 
"the long sickness of too much thinking." When the 
vessel put out to sea again, Baranof, too, put to sea, 
but it was to the boundless sea of eternity. He died 
on April 16, 1819, and was laid to rest in the arms of 
the great ocean that had cradled his hopes from the 
time he left Siberia. 

To pass judgment on Baranof's life would be a 
piece of futility. His life, like the lives of all those 
Pacific coast adventurers, stands or falls by what it 
was, not what it meant to be; by what it did, not what 
it left undone; and what Baranof left was an empire 
half the size of Russia. That his country afterward 
lost that empire was no fault of his. Like all those 
Vikings of the North Pacific, he was essentially a man 
who did things^ not a theorizer on how things ought to 
be done, not a slug battening on the things other men 
have done. 

They were not anaemic, these old "sea voyagers" of 
the Pacific, daring death or devil, with the red blood 
of courage in their veins, and the red blood of a lawless 
manhood, too. They were not men of milk and water 
type, with little good and less bad. Neither their 
virtues nor their vices were lukewarm; but they did 
things, these men; added to the sum total of human 
effort, human knowledge, human progress. Sordid 
their motives may have been, sordid as the blacksmith's 
when he smashes his sledge on the anvil; but from the 
anvil of their hardships, from the clash of the pri- 



338 VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC 

mordial warfare between the Spirit of the Elements and 
the Spirit of Man, struck out some sparks of the Divine. 
There was the courage as dauntless in the teeth of the 
gale as in the face of death. There was the yearning 
to know More, to seek it, to follow it over earth's ends, 
though the quest led to the abyss of a watery grave. 
What did they want, these fool fellows, following the 
rushlight of their own desires ? That is just it. They 
didn't know what they sought, but they knew there 
was something just beyond to be sought, something 
new to be known; and because Man is Man, they set 
out on the quest of the unknown, chancing life and 
death for the sake of a little gain to human progress. 
It is the spirit of the heroic ages, and to that era belongs 
the history of the Vikings on the North Pacific. 



INDEX 



Adakh Island, Chirikoff at, 51. 

Admiralty Inlet, explored, 270-271. 

Adventure, first American ship built 
on Pacific, 233, 234, 238, 325. 

Alaska, Bering's expedition on coast 
of, 26 ff. ; Chirikoffs arrival at, 
50-51 ; Benyowsky's visit to, 125; 
Cook explores coast of, 189-194 ; 
Gray's trip to, 238 ; Vancouver's 
survey of southern coast of, 286- 
290 ; Baranof's career in, 318-337. 
See Sitka. 

Aleutian Islands, Bering's voyage of 
discovery among, 26-41 ; sea-otter's 
habitat on, 42, 53, 56, 63, 66-67, 
69-70, 82-83 ; f^"^ hunters of the, 
67-78, 81-84, 321-323. 328-330- 

Aleut Indians, as otter-hunters, 69-78 ; 
harsh treatment of, by Russians, 79, 
81-88 ; Russian hunters massacred 
by, 91-95, 100-104 ; punishment of, 
105 ; in Sitka massacre, 307-310, 
332 ; accompany Baranof on voyage 
of vengeance, 311-314 ; with Bara- 
nof in Prince William Sound, 322 ff. 

Alexander Archipelago, Chirikoff in 
the, 46-52. 

Alexis, Aleut Indian boy hostage, 98, 
99, 102. 

Anderson, Dr., vpith Cook, 193. 

Anian, Straits of, 9, 279 n. 

Anton, Juan de, captain of Glory of 
the South Seas, 158 n. 



Apraxin, Count, 8 n. 

Archangel Michael, modern Sitka once 
named, 306 ; founding of, by Bara- 
nof, 306, 331-332; massacre at, 307- 

310. 332. 

Arguello, Don Joseph, 241. 

Aricara, Drake at, 155. 

Astor, John Jacob, 65, 212, 303, 318, 
322, iiZ. 

Athabasca Lake, attempt to identify, 
with Northwest Passage, 174, 175. 

Atka, otter grounds at, 69. 

Atto, Hawaiian boy, 229, 233, 240. 

Attoo, village in, destroyed by Russian 
fur hunters, 83. 

Auteroche, Chappe d', cited, 295. 

Avacha Bay, Bering at, 17, 19, 23; 
survivors of Bering expedition re- 
turn to, 59-60 ; vessels of Cook's 
expedition at, 208. 

B 

Baker, lieutenant in Vancouver's ex- 
pedition, 266, 270. 

Baker, Mount, 270. 

Balboa, 134, 144. 

Baltimore, Benyowsky visits, 127. 

Bancroft, Hubert Howe, cited, 24I, 
290, 295. 

Baranof, Alexander, governor of Rus- 
sian American Fur Company, 67, 
167 n., 288, 301, 304, 306, 310; 
character of, 316-317 ; personal ap- 
pearance of, 317 ; early career of, 



339 



340 



INDEX 



317-318; sails to America (1790), 
318; wrecked on Oonalaska, 319- 
320 ; builds boat and reaches Ka- 
diak, 321 ; defeats hostile Indians 
at Nuchek Island, 323-324 ; estab- 
lishes fort at Sitka, 331 ; loses fort 
by Sitka massacre, but rebuilds and 
founds New Archangel (modern 
Sitka), 332-333; in old age de- 
posed from governorship, 335-336 ; 
death of, 337. 

Baranof Castle, Sitka, 301. 

Barber, Captain, at Sitka, 310. 

Barclay, English sea-captain, 224, 227, 
254, 264, 272. 

Barnes, sailor with Gray, 230. 

Barren, Joseph, 21 1, 215, 229, 241, 

Bassof, otter hunter, 82-83. 

Begg, cited, 290 n. 

Behm, Major, 196, 208. 

Behm Canal, 286. 

Benyowsky, Mauritius, Polish exile to 
Kamchatka, 108-1 10 ; career of, at 
Bolcheresk, 1 13-122 ; escapes tosea 
on pirate cruise, 122 ; meets Ocho- 
tyn at Bering Island, 123-124 ; visits 
Alaska, 125 ; adventures of, in 
Luzon, Formosa, and China, 126- 
127; holds French commission in 
Madagascar, 137 ; returns to Eu- 
rope, goes to Baltimore, and is sent 
on filibustering expedition to Mada- 
gascar, 127; death of, 127-128; 
authorities for, 1 28 n. 

Berg, cited, 11 n., 22 n., 129, 295. 

Bering, Anna, 8 n. 

Bering, Jonas, 8 n. 

Bering, Thomas, 22 n. 

Bering, Unos, 22. 

Bering, Vitus Ivanovich, birth and 
early history of, 8 ; commissioned 
by Peter the Great to explore waters 
between Russia and America, 8-10 ; 
first expedition of (1725-1730), 10- 
12 ; second expedition undertaken 



by, 12; difficulties of, with scien- 
tists about " Gamaland," 13-15, 19, 
22, 24 ; arrival of expedition of, at 
Okhotsk, 16 ; start of, from Avacha 
Bay, Kamchatka (1741), 17; cruise 
of, in S(. Peter, 22-45 ^ landfall at 
Kyak Island, 26-27, 47 "i- J Mt. St. 
Elias discovered by, 26 ; explora- 
tion of coast of Alaskan peninsula 
by, 28-36 ; forced to winter at Com- 
mander Islands, 35-36 ; death of, 
54; summary of work of, 55-56, 
61 ; conclusions of, rejected by scien- 
tists, 172-173 ; mentioned in con- 
nection with other explorers, 183, 
184 n., 239, 263, 264; Cook verifies 
conclusions of, 189-194. 

Bering Bay, 288. 

Bering Island, 37-45, 97, 1 23-1 24, 
300, 315. 

Betshevin, Siberian merchant, 84, 87. 

Bidarkas, fur hunters' boats, 67. 

Billings, Joseph, 254, 258, 259-261. 

Boit, John, 230. 

Bolcheresk, capital of Kamchatka, 113- 
114; description of, 1 14 ; Benyow- 
sky's career at, 1 14-122. 

Boston, interest at, in Gray's expedi- 
tions, 215-216, 229-230, 240-241. 

"Bostons " (^Bostoutiais), Indians call 
all Americans, 210. 

Brazil, Drake's lost sailors in, 152. 

Bristol Bay, 193. 

Broughton, Lieutenant, 266, 271, 279, 
280, 281 ; Voyage by, cited, 295 n. 

Brown, Samuel, of Boston, 21 1, 229. 

Brown, Dr. William, Ledyard travels 
with, 258-259. 

Bulfinch, Charles, 211, 212; daughter 
of, named " Columbia," 240. 

Bulfinch, Dr., of Boston, 211, 241. 

Burney, Voyages by, 295 n. 

Burrard Inlet, 273. 

Burroughs, John, cited, 72 n. 

Bute Inlet, 274. 



INDEX 



341 



California, Drake's visit to, 160-165, 
169-171 ; Vancouver's visit to, 281- 
282 ; Russian American Fur Com- 
pany in, 315, 

California, vessel for exploration, 1 74. 

Callao, Drake sacks, 155-156. 

Campbell, Dr., quoted, 172-173. 

Cannibals, Cook's stay among, 187; 
on Portland Canal, 230. 

Cape Adams, 280. 

Cape Addington, 46. 

Cape Disappointment, 224, 235, 267, 
269, 279, 280. 

Cape Douglas, 191. 

Cape Elizabeth, 191. 

Cape Flattery, 185, 223, 224, 235, 270. 

Cape Foulweather, 184. 

Cape Gregory, 184. 

Cape Horn, Drake discovers, 153; 
Gray expedition rounds, 216-217. 

Cape Khitroff, 41. 

Cape Lookout, 219. 

Cape Meares, 224. 

Cape Perpetua, 184. 

Cape Prince of Wales, 193, 208. 

Captain Harbor, 300 ; Drusenin at, 
89 ; Ledyard's arrival at, 250. 

Carder, Peter, 152 n. 

Cartier, Jacques, 272. 

Caswell, Joshua, 230. 

Catherine, Empress, 7. 

Chaplin, Peter, il n. 

Chathaiii, Lieutenant Broughton com- 
mands, in Vancouver cruise, 266. 

Chesterfield Inlet, 174-175. 

Chinook, Indian village, 281, 

Chirikoff, Alexei, Bering's second in 
command, II, 13, 18, 19, 20, 60 ; 
cruise of, in the St. Paid, 45-53. 

Christopher, Captain, 175. 

Christopher, Drake's vessel, 147. 

Christy, Silver Map of, 168. 

Chukchee Indians, 5, 9, 193, 194, 318. 



Clayoquot, Gray at, 227, 232-234. 
Gierke, Captain, 181, 203, 206, 207, 

208 ; death of, 209. 
Cleveland, Captain, Boston trader, 

295. zi^-zz^- 

Collectors of tribute, Cossack, 5, 107, 
294-296, 299. 

Cobimbia, vessel commanded by Cap- 
tain Kendrick, on cruise to Pacific, 
212-213, 215 ; Gray in command 
of, 228, 268-269. 

Columbia River, Meares searches for, 
224 ; Vancouver misses, 235, 267- 
268 ; Heceta quoted regarding, 235— 
236; Gray discovers and names, 236- 
238, 241, 268, 269 ; Broughton's 
trip up, 280. 

Commander Islands, Bering expedi- 
tion at, 37-45, 61 ; sea-otter found 
on, 67, 76. 

Cook, Captain James, 19, 64 n., 78, 
127, 128 n., 161, 168, 222, 226, 263, 
264, 265 ; boyhood and youth of, 
176-177; seaman on Newcastle 
coaler, 177; enters Royal Navy, 
178-180 ; before Quebec with 
Wolfe, 180; sent by Royal Society 
on voyage to South Seas (1768- 
1771), 180-181 ; makes voyage 
round the world, 181 ; starts on 
historic voyage of discovery and 
exploration, 181 ; John Ledyard's 
connection with expedition of, 181- 
182, 247 ; terms of secret commis- 
sion of, 182-183; Drake's "New 
Albion" sighted by, 184; misses 
Straits of Fuca, 184-185 ; anchors 
at Nootka, 186 ; visits Kyak Island, 
189 ; in Prince William Sound, 190- 
191 ; explores Cook's Inlet, 191- 
192 ; sails along coast of Alaska to 
Cape Prince of Wales, and crosses 
Bering Strait to Siberia, 193; veri- 
fies Bering's conclusions, 193-194 ; 
explores Norton Sound, 195 ; stops 



342 



INDEX 



at Oonalaska, 195-196 ; returns to 
Sandwich Islands to winter, 196- 
197 ; friendly reception of, by 
Hawaiians, 197-199 ; sailors of, 
abuse hospitality of natives, 199- 
200 ; difficulties of, over boat stolen 
by natives, 203 ; brave stand taken 
by, and death of, 203-205 ; authori- 
ties for, 209 n, ; account of voyage 
of, leads to sending out of Robert 
Gray, 211; Gray's work and its 
results compared with those of, 
239-240. 

Cook's Inlet, sea-otter in, 66-67, ^^> 
69, 79; explored by Cook, 189- 
192; Vancouver's survey of, 287- 
288 ; Russian fur traders' doings in, 
326-327. 

Coolidge, Davis, 214, 230. 

Copper Island, 44, 97, 315. 

Coquimbo, Drake at, 154. 

Cortes, 133-134- 

Coxe, William, cited, 61, 82, 105, 295. 

Crowning of Drake by Indians, 164. 

D 

Dcedalus, Vancouver's supply ship, 266, 
282; seized by Sandwich Islanders 
and two officers murdered, 284. 

Da Gama, Vasco, 134. 

Dall, cited, li n., 295. 

Dartmouth College, courses for mis- 
sionaries at, 244-245. 

Davidson, Dr. George, x, 47 n., 162 n., 
168, 290 n. 

Davidson, George, member of Gray's 
second expedition, 230, 240, 241. 

Dawson, cited, 290 n. 

Dementieff, Abraham, 47-48. 

Derby, John, 211, 229. 

Derby Sound, 228. 

Deshneff, explorer, vii, 296. 

Deshon, Captain, 253-254. 

Discovery, Vancouver's ship, 266; on 



rocks in Straits of Fuca, 275 ; Ha- 
waiian girls on board of, 284-2S5. 

Discovery, vessel commanded by Cap- 
tain Gierke, in Cook's voyage, 181. 

D'Isles, the, geographers, 19, 20, 52. 

Distress Cove, 228. 

Dixon, George, 78, 209, 227, 254, 290 n. 

Dobbs, patron of exploration, 174. 

Dohbs, vessel for exploration, 174. 

Doughty, Thomas, 147; trial and exe- 
cution of, 148-149, 168. 

Douglas, Captain, 223-226. 

Dragon, Drake's vessel, 140. 

Drake, Francis, family and boyhood 
of, 139; with Hawkins in West 
Indies, 139; cruises Spanish Main 
(1570-1573), 140-141; seizes one 
million pounds in silver from Spanish 
at Nombre de Dios, 141-142; first 
views Pacific Ocean, 143-144; at- 
tacks gold train at Venta Cruz, 
144-145; returns to England, 146; 
Queen Elizabeth and, 146; starts 
on historic cruise (1577), 147; 
Doughty's trial and execution, 148- 
149, 168; enters Pacific through 
Straits of Magellan, 150; driven 
south by storm, 151-153; discovers 
Cape Horn, 153; piratical voyage 
of, up South American coast, 153- 
155; captures Glory of the South 
Seas, 158; plans to return home by 
Northeast Passage, 158-159; land- 
fall north of California, 1 59-161, 
168; gives up idea of Northeast 
Passage, 161; visits California, l6l- 
162, 169; welcomed by Indians, 
162-163, 1 69- 1 70; crowning of, 
164; calls region "New Albion," 
164; returns to England around 
Cape of Good Hope (1580), 165; 
subsequent career of, 166; death 
and burial of, 166-167, ^7*» *"' 
thorities for, 167 n. 

Drake, John, 141, 142, 157, 



INDEX 



343 



Drake's Bay, 162, 28 1. 

Drusenin, Alexei, otter hunter, 81, 84; 
winters at Oonalaska, 88-91; mur- 
dered by natives, 91-92. 



East Cape, 195, 208-209. 

Elizabeth, Drake's vessel, 147, I48 ; 

returns to England, 152. 
Elizabeth, Queen, and Drake, 146. 
Elliott, cited, 72 n., 295. 
Ellis, explorer, 1 74-1 75. 
Equator, rites on crossing, 182, 216. 
Eskimo Indians, Russian explorers 

hear about, 6. See Aleut and Ko- 

losh Indians. 



Fages, Don Pedro, cited, 24I. 

Fairvvfeather Mountains, 189. 

Fletcher, Francis, Drake's chaplain, 
149, 154 n., 167; chronicle of, 
quoted, 161, 165, i67n.-i7in. 

Foggy Island (Ukamok), 29, 192. 

Folger, sailor with Gray, 230. 

Formosa, Benyowsky in, 127. 

Fort Defence, 233, 325. 

Franklin, Benjamin, Benyowsky's 
meeting with, 128 n. 

Eraser River, Vancouver misses dis- 
covering, 272-273. 

Friendly Cove, 276, 278. 

Frobisher, Martin, 159. 

Fuca, Juan de, 173, 174, 184, 264, 
272 ; account of legend of, con- 
cerning Northeast Passage, 275 n. 

Fuca Straits. See Straits of Fuca. 



Galiano, Don, 272-273. 
Gama, John de, 6 n. 
Gamaland, mythical continent, 6, 9, 
168, 173 ; Bering's conclusion con- 



cerning non-existence of, 12, 18 ; 
on D'Isles' map, 19 ; Bering's 
second voyage in search of, 22- 
23 ; search for, relinquished, 24- 
25 ; Cook demolishes myth of, l8l. 

Garret, John, 141. 

Glory of the South Seas, Spanish gal- 
leon, 155, 156, 157; captured by 
Drake, 158. 

Glottoff, Stephen, 88, 96; Korovin 
rescued by, 104. 

Gmelin, scientist, 14 n., 295 n. 

Golden Hind, Drake renames the 
Pelican the, 150 ; cruise on the 
Pacific in, 151-165; end of, 166. 

Gore, Cook's lieutenant, 190. 

Gorelin, Russian sailor, 87, 91 n. 

Gray, Robert, character of, 213; sent 
by Boston merchants on fur-trad- 
ing voyage to the Pacific coast, 
213-214; departure of, from Bos- 
ton (October, 1787), 215-216; 
rounds Cape Horn and reaches 
Drake's "New Albion," 216-218; 
adventures of, in Tillamook Bay, 
219-222 ; sails to Nootka, 222- 
223 ; meets Captains Meares and 
Douglas, 223-225 ; in spring ex- 
plores Straits of Fuca, 227, 235; 
takes cargo of furs to China and 
returns to Boston (August, 1790), 
228-229; leaves Boston on second 
voyage (September, 1790), 230; 
winters at Clayoquot (1791-1792), 
232-234 ; builds sloop Adventtire, 
233, 234, 325 ; meets Vancouver 
expedition, 235, 268-270; dis- 
covers and names Columbia River 
(May, 1792), 236-238, 241, 268, 
269 ; goes to China and returns 
to Boston (July, 1793), 238; 
death of, 238 ; place of, among 
discoverers, 238-240 ; authorities 
for, 240 n.; later mention of, 
264, 272, 286, 322 ; Lieutenant 



344 



INDEX 



Broughton's view of explorations 

of, 280. 
Gray's Harbor, 236, 241. 
Greenhow, cited, 241, 290, 295. 
Guatalco, Drake stops at, 159. 
Gulf of Georgia, 271. 
Gvozdef, discoverer, 1 2 n. 



H 

Hagemeister, Lieutenant, 335-336. 

Hall, Sir James, and Ledyard, 256. 

Hancock, Clayoquot renamed, 227. 

Hancock, Governor, 229. 

Harriman Expedition, the, 72 n. 

Haskins, member of Gray's second ex- 
pedition, 230. 

Haswell, Robert, in Gray's expedi- 
tions, 214, 216, 220-222, 228, 230, 
234, 240, 241, 

Hatch, Captain Crowell, 21 1. 

Hawkins, Sir John, 135-139, 166. 

Hearne, Samuel, 174, 175, 181. 

Heceta, Captain Bruno, 219, 241 ; 
quoted regarding Columbia River, 
235-236. 

Henriquez, Don Martin, 136. 

Hoffman, German exile, 108-III. 

Hood Canal, explored, 270-271. 

Howe, Richard, accountant in Gray's 
expedition, 214. 

Howe's Sound, 274. 



Iqr Cape, Cook names, 195. 

Inalook Island, 90. 

Indians, Californian, and Drake, 162- 

165, 169-171. 
Ingraham, Joseph, 214, 230, 240, 322. 
Isle, Louis la Croyere de 1', 19, 20, 

209 ; death of, 52. 
Isle of Pinos, 141. 
Ismyloff, Russian trader-spy, 118, 119, 

122, 123, 124, 127, I28n. ; Cook 



meets, 196 ; treacherous letters of, 
208 ; Ledyard's encounters with, 
251, 253, 258, 260-261 ; in service 
of Russian American Fur Company, 
under Baranof, 322, 323. 

J 

Japan, charted by Martin Spanberg, 
18 ; laws to protect the sea-otter 
moved by, 67 ; Benyowsky's adven- 
tures in, 126-127. 

Jefferson, Thomas, Ledyard and, 255, 
261-262. 

Jervis Canal, 274. 

Johnstone, with Vancouver, 266, 271, 
273. 275. 

Jokai, Maurus, Benyowsky's life told 
by, 127, 

Jones, Paul, and Ledyard, 255. 

Juan Fernandez, Columbia repaired 
at, 217. 

K 

Kadiak Indians in California, 315. 

Kadiak Island, otter-hunting head- 
quarters, 69, 79; Ochotyn at, 124; 
Benyowsky visits, 125 ; Baranof at, 
321-329. 

Kakooa, Sandwich Islands, 203, 206. 

Kalekhta, Aleutian village, 90, 94. 

Kamchatka, Bering sails from, 1 1 ; 
Benyowsky in, 1 13-122. 

Karakakooa Bay, Cook at, 197-205. 

Kendrick, Captain John, 213, 214, 216, 
217, 225, 226, 228, 229, 264, 272, 
322 ; adventures of, on Queen 
Charlotte Island, 230-232 ; death 
of, 238. 

Kendrick, Solomon, murdered, 232. 

Khitroff, in Bering expedition, 26-27, 
30-31, 36. 

King, Captain, with Cook, 128 n., 186, 
192, 198, 200, 203, 206. 

Koah, Hawaiian priest, 198, 206, 207. 



INDEX 



345 



Kohl, J. G., cited, i68, 295. 

Kolosh Indians, massacre by, 307-310, 

332 ; Baranof's encounter with, 330, 
Konovalof, bandit, 327-328. 
Korelin, companion of Drusenin, 90- 

91, 92, 94. 
Korovin, Ivan, 88, 96 ; experiences of, 

at Oonalaska, 97-105. 
Koshigin Bay, 319. 

Kotches, Russian boats, 295-296, 297. 
Kotzebue, dramatist, takes Benyowsky 

for a subject, 127. 
Kotzebue, Otto von, works by, 295. 
Kowrowa, Sandwich Islands, 197,203. 
Kracheninnikof, cited, 295. 
Krusenstern, Lieutenant, 295, 311. 
Kyacks, Eskimo boats, 68. 
Kyak Island, Bering's landfall, 26-27, 

47 n. ; Cook at, 189 ; Baranof at, 

329-330. 



Lady Washington, the. Gray sails on, 
to Pacific coast, 213-219; Captain 
Kendrick in command of, 228 ; last 
mention of, 238. 

Langsdorff, cited, 295. 

La Salle, vii, 60. 

Lauridsen, Peter, authority on Bering, 
12 n., 61 n. 

La Verendrye, vii, 7, 19, 60, 177. 

Ledyard, Dr., 243 n. 

Ledyard, John, corporal of marines 
with Cook, 181-182, 195-196, 200, 
203, 205, 247-252 ; authority for 
Cook's voyage, 209 n. ; early career 
of, 242-244 ; authorities for life 
of, 243 n., 262 n. ; student at Dart- 
mouth College, 245 ; works his way 
to England, 245-246 ; experiences 
of, in London, 246-247 ; on return 
of Cook expedition sent to fight 
against United States, 252 ; returns 
to Groton and deserts from British 
navy, 252-253 ; borrows money. 



goes to Paris, and meets Paul Jones 
and Thomas Jefferson, 254-255 ; in 
England, 256; walks fourteen hun- 
dred miles from Stockholm around 
Baltic Sea to St. Petersburg, 257- 

258 ; accompanies Dr. Brown three 
thousand miles into Siberia, 258- 

259 ; joins Joseph Billings' expedi- 
tion and reaches Lena River, 260 ; 
arrested as a French spy, carried 
back to St. Petersburg, and expelled 
from the country, 260-261 ; reaches 
London and is sent to discover 
source of Nile, 261-262 ; dies at 
Cairo, 262. 

Lewis and Clark expedition, 60-61 ; 

John Ledyard's influence on, 242, 

255, 262. 
Lincoln, General, of Boston, 229. 
Lisiansky, Captain, 295, 311, 313. 
Lok, Michael, 275 n. 
Lopez, Marcus, 216, 220; murder of, 

by Indians, 221. 
Lynn Canal, Vancouver's survey of, 

288. 

M 

Macao, Benyowsky in, 127, 128. 
Macfie, Vancouver Island by, 295 n. 
Mackenzie, Alexander, 219. 
Madagascar, Benyowsky's adventures 

and death in, 127. 
Magellan, explorer, 134-135. 
Magellan, Hyacinth de, 128 n. 
Makushin Volcano, 86, 96-97, 105 n. 
Maquinna, Indian chief, 276, 277-278. 
Marquette, Pere, vii, 7. 
Martin, Hudson's Bay Territories by, 

295 n. 
Martinez, Don Joseph, 227. 
Marygold, Drake's vessel, 147, 148; 

loss of, 151-152. 
Massacre, of Russians at Oonalaska 

and Oomnak, 100-105 J *^^ Sitka, 

307-310. 332- 



346 



INDEX 



Mayne, cited, 290 n. 

Meares, English sea-captain, 223-226, 

227, 235, 254, 264, 267, 272, 273, 

322. 
Meares' Voyages, cited, 290 n. 
Medals, the Drake, 168; of Gray ex- 
pedition, 215, 241. 
Medvedeff, Denis, 88, 96, 97-98; 

murder of, 104. 
Medvednikoff, commander at Sitka, 

308. 
Menzies, 235, 266, 269, 271. 
Mercury, Cook on the, 180. 
Michael, Kolosh chief, 308, 310. 
Middleton, Captain, 174. 
Morai, the, Hawaiian burying-place, 

198, 201, 202. 
Morris, Robert, and Ledyard, 254. 
Motley, John Lothrop, cited, 4 n. 
Mottley, John, cited, 4 n. 
Mount Baker, 270. 
Mount Edgecumbe, 46-47, 189, 331. 
Mount Hood, 280. 
Mount Olympus, 235. 
Mount St. Elias, 26, 189. 
Miiller, S., scientist, 12 n., 14 n.; cited, 

32, 61, 295. 
Murderers' Harbor, 222. 



N 

Naplavkof, conspirator, 334-335. 
New Albion, Drake's, 164, 173, 182, 

183, 184; Gray expedition off, 218; 

Vancouver's expedition sights, 267; 

Vancouver takes possession of, 271. 
New Archangel, modern Sitka, 314, 

333- 

New Zealand, explored by Cook, 181. 
Nicholson, William, edits Benyowsky's 

memoirs, 128 n. 
Nilow, governor of Kamchatka, 116- 

120. 
Nombre de Dios, storehouse of New 

Spain, 140; Drake's raid, 141-142. 



Nootka, Cook's vessels at, 186-189, 
248; Gray at, 223-227, 232, 238; 
Vancouver's conference with Span- 
ish at, 276-279. 

Nootka Indians, Cook visits, 185-189. 

Nordenskjold, explorer, 209 n., 295 n. 

Norfolk Sound. See Sitka Sound. 

Northeast Passage, the, 158-159, 172; 
Drake's conclusions regarding, 161; 
Parliament offers reward for dis- 
covery of, 174; English agitation 
over, 174-175, 181; Cook's efforts 
to discover, 182-196; Captain Gierke 
decides there is no, 209; Vancou- 
ver's attitude on question of, 265- 
266; Vancouver proves the non- 
existence of, 275, 286-290; the Fuca 
legend concerning, 275 n. 

North'vest-America, launching of, 
223; seized by Spanish, 228. 

Norton, Moses, 175. 

Norton Sound, Cook explores, 195. 

Nuchek Island, Baranof at, 322-324. 

Nutting, Gray's astronomer, 214. 



Ochotyn, Saxon exile, 123-124. 

Ofzyn, Bering's lieutenant, 36, 38, 40. 

Okhotsk, Bering's expedition at, 16. 

Olympus, Mount, 235. 

Olympus Range, 222-223, 268. 

Oomnak Island, 84-85; sulphur at, 
92; sea-otter on, 98; Korovin's ad- 
ventures at, 102-103; Medvedeff 
and crew massacred at, 104. 

Oonalaska, otter-hunting headquar- 
ters, 69, 79, 82, 98; sulphur at, 92, 
103; Korovin's experiences at, 98- 
lOi; Cook at, 195-196; Ledyard's 
visit to, with Cook, 250-253. 

Oregon and California, Greenhow's, 
241. 

Oregon and Eldorado, Bulfinch's, 241, 

Oxenham, with Drake, 142. 



INDEX 



347 



Pacha, Drake's vessel, 141. 

Pacific Company, 212. See Astor. 

Pallas, Northern Settlements by, 295 n. 

Palliser, Sir Hugh, 179. 

Pareea, Hawaiian chief, 198, 203. 

Pelican, Drake's vessel, 147, 148; re- 
named Golden Hind, 150. 

Perpheela, Ledyard's guide, 249. 

"Peso," defined, 154 n. 

Peter the Great, 4-10; analogy be- 
tween Cook and, 176. 

Petroft, Ivan, cited, 105 n., 295. 

Philippine Islands, Benyowsky's visit 
to, 126; Drake passes by, 165. 

Phillips, marine with Cook, 204-205. 

P/icenix, Baranof builds, 326. 

Pickersgill, explorer, 175. 

Pilcher, sailor with Drake, 152 n. 

Pintard, John Marden, 211, 229. 

Pissarjeff, Major-General, 16. 

Pizarro, Francisco, 134. 

Pleneser, artist, 41. 

Point Breakers, 185. 

Point Possession, 271. 

Point Turn-Again, 192. 

Porter, Rev. E. G., lecture by, 241. 

Portland Canal, 228 ; Gray sails up, 
230 ; Vancouver's exploration of, 
286. 

Portlock, J. E., 78, 209 n., 254, 290 n. 

Port St. Julian, Doughty executed at, 
147-149. 

Prince of Wales, Cape, 193, 208. 

Prince of Wales Island, 228. 

Prince William Sound, sea-otter in, 
66 ; named by Cook, 191 ; Rus- 
sian settlements on, 287, 306, 
322-329. 

Prybiloff Islands, otter and seal found 
on, 79, 

Puget, Peter, 235, 266, 269, 271, 273, 
277, 282. 

Puget Sound, explored, 270-271, 273. 



Purchas' Pilgrims, cited, 152, 167, 275. 
Pushkareff, Sergeant, 84-88. 



Quadra, Don, 238, 240, 273, 322; Van- 
couver's conference with, 277-279. 

Quebec, Cook with Wolfe at, 180. 

Queen Charlotte Island, discovered, 
227 ; Captain Kendrick at, 230- 
232. 

R 

Radisson, vii, 7, 239. 

Resolution, Cook's ship, 181-209. 

Reward offered by Parliament for dis- 
covery of Northeast Passage, 174. 

Rezanoff, Nikolai, 306, 311, 314-315. 

Robert Anne, Benyowsky's vessel, 127. 

Roberts, Gray's surgeon, 214, 216. 

Ross, Russian California colony, 315. 

Russian American Fur Company, 67, 
i2Sn.; chartered, 306; early vicis- 
situdes of, 307-314; at New Arch- 
angel (Sitka), 314; in California, 
315. See Baranof. 

Ryumin, Ivan, Russian account of 
Benyowsky by, 129. 



Saanach coast, sea-otter on, 69. 

St. Lawrence Island, il, 12. 

St. Paul, Bering's vessel, 17; Chiri- 

koff in command of, 20, 22, 24 ff., 

60 ; voyage of, 45-53- 
St. Peter, Bering's vessel, 17, 20, 

23 ff. ; wreck of, 44-45. 
St. Peter, the second, 58-59. 
St. Peter and Paul, the, 113, I17; 

Benyowsky's cruise in, 122-126. 
Sands, Mr., of New York, 254. 
Sandwich Islands, Cook's visit to and 

death at, 196-205 ; Gray stops at, 

228-229 ; conduct of fur traders 



348 



INDEX 



who visited, 283-284 ; Vancouver's 
actions at, 284-285. 

San Francisco, Vancouver at, 281-282. 

Sauer, cited, 27, 260, 295. 

Savelief, Sidor, 48. 

Sea cows, 41, 53. 

Seals, 42, 56-57, 67. 

Sea-otter, 42, 53, 56 ; habitat of, on 
Aleutian Islands, 63, 66-67, 82-83 ; 
Bering's men reap a fortune from, 
63-64, 79 ; influence of, on explora- 
tion of North Pacific, 65 ; descrip- 
tion of, 65-66 ; methods of hunting 
the, 67-78 ; prices commanded for 
fur of, 76 ; figures of numbers killed, 
79 ; the early hunters of, 80-105 ; 
Cook's trade in, 187; Gray's bar- 
gain, 228. 

Selkirk, Lord, 303. 

Serdze Kamen, 12 n., 195. 

Seymour, Henry, 243. 

ShelikoflF, Gregory Ivanovich, 303-306, 

315- 

Shelikoff, Natalie, 304. 

Shevyrin, with Drusenin, 92-97. 

Shields, English shipbuilder with Bara- 
nof, 325-326, 328. 

Shumagin Islands, 30, 192. 

Silva, Nuno, Drake's pilot, 159, 167 n. 

Silver Map of the World, 168. 

Simpson, Voyage Round World by, 
295 n. 

Sitka, Indians massacre Russians at, 
50 n., 307-310, 332 ; as capital of 
Russian America, called Archangel 
Michael, 306 ; Russian American 
Fur Company founds New Arch- 
angel on site of, 314, 333; Bara- 
nofs career at, 330-336. 

Sitka Sound, Chirikoff in, 46-52; sea- 
otter in, 66, 79; Vancouver ends 
his explorations at, 289. 

Snug Cove, 186, 276. 

Society Islands, Cook's first visit to, 
180-181; second visit, 182. 



Solovieff, Cossack hunter, 105. 
South Seas, Cook's voyage to, 180-181. 
Spanberg, Martin, 1 1, 13, 14, 16, 18, 21. 
Sparks, Jared, Life of Ledyard by, 

243 n., 262 n. 
Staduchin, explorer, 296. 
Stejneger, Dr. Leo, x, 41 n., 72 n., 

295 n. 
Steller, George William, 14 n., 20, 23, 

25, 26-27, 30, 33, 38-40, 41, 42, 

53-55. 60. 
Steller's Arch, 39. 
Stephanow, Hippolite, 108, 1 10, 125, 

127. 
Straits of Fuca, Cook's conclusion as 

to non-existence of, 185, 222, 264; 

Gray sails near, 223; Gray explores, 

227, 235, 269; Vancouver's arrival 

at and exploration of, 268-270, 273- 

275- 

Straits of Magellan, 135; Drake's pas- 
sage of, 150. 

Sulphur at Oonalaska, 92, 103. 

Sunday Harbor, 325. 

Swan, Drake's vessel, 140, 141, 147. 



Tahoo, the, 198. 

Tarapaca, Drake calls at, 154-155. 

Terreeoboo, King, 197-206. 

Texeira, map-maker, 6 n. 

Three Saints, Kadiak, Baranofs arrival 

at, 321-322. 
Tillamook Bay, Lady Washington in, 

219-222. 
Toledo, Don Francisco de, 155-156. 
Treat, fur trader in Gray's expedition, 

214. 
Tribute collectors, Cossack, 5, 107, 

114, 294-296,299. 



U 

Ukamok (Foggy Island), 29. 



INDEX 



349 



Valdes, Don, 272-273. 

Valparaiso, Drake's raid on, 153-154. 

Vancouver, George, vii, 105, 161 ; 
midshipman with Cook, 181, 198; 
authority on Cook's voyage, 209 n.; 
meeting with Gray, 235, 268-270 ; 
Gray contrasted with, 239-240 ; 
as captain in British navy, sent to 
explore Pacific coast of America, 
265 ; ideas on Northeast Passage 
question, 265-266 ; sights Drake's 
" New Albion," 267 ; misses Colum- 
bia River, 267-268, 235 ; explores 
Puget Sound, 270-272 ; misses 
Fraser River, 272 ; explores Straits 
of Fuca, 272-275 ; arrives at Nootka, 
276 ; confers with Spanish repre- 
sentative, 277-279; sails to Colum- 
bia River, 279-280 ; visits Cali- 
fornia, 281-282 ; winters at Sand- 
wich Islands (1792- 1 793), 283- 
285; acts of injustice and justice at, 
284-285 ; returns to American coast 
and surveys Portland Canal, 286- 
287; in 1 794 surveys Cook's Inlet, 
287-289; work of, results in explo- 
sion of theory of Northeast Passage, 
289-290; authorities for, 290 n. 

Vancouver Island, 228, 278. 

Vega, the, 209 n., 295 n. 

Veniaminof, Letters on Aleutians by, 
295 n. 

Venta Cruz, Drake at, 141-145. 



Vera Cruz, Hawkins and Drake vs. 

the Spanish at, 135-138. 
Verendrye. See La Verendrye. 
Voyage to the Pacific Ocean, Cook's, 

209 n. 

W 

Walrus, the Pacific, 73 ; Cook's men 

hunt, 194-195. 
Waters, Abraham, 230. 
Waxel, Lieutenant, 20, 24-25, 30, 31, 

32, 33. 35-36, 37-38, 41, 42, 57-58, 

60. 
Williams, Orlando, cited, 4 n. 
Woodruff, mate in Gray's expedition, 

214, 216. 
World Encompassed, The, by Francis 

Fletcher, 167 n.-i7i n. 



Yakutat Bay, sea-otter in, 66, 79. 

Yakutsk, Bering's second expedition 
winters at, 15; fur traders' rendez- 
vous near, 107, 259 ; Ledyard's 
arrival at, 259. 

Yelagin, Chirikoffs pilot, 52. 

Yendell, Samuel, 230. 

Yermac, Cossack robber, 294. 

Yukon, Russian traders on the, 314, 
315. 



Zarate, Don Francisco de, quoted re- 
garding Drake, 150 n. 



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